Too Good To Be True

Genesis 18:13

“And the Lord asked Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I really bear a child when I am so old?”

Have you ever come across one of the promises of God and thought it was too good to be true? Perhaps you’ve read a verse about God healing someone or blessing someone and thought, “it must be nice for them, but that’s not going to happen for me.” Sarah felt the same way. The only thing Sarah wanted in life was to have a baby. For years, she had dreamed of having a child. She had prayed. She had begged. She had cried. And now at 99, she had made her peace with the fact that children just weren’t in the cards for her. And then along comes God and makes this outrageous statement that Sarah will have a child within the year.

What?! What kind of cruel joke is this? Take my hopes and dreams….the ones I know are dead and buried….the ones I’ve already grieved over….the ones I have already given up on and breathe new life into them?! Nope! No way!

This was a grief-filled laugh. This was the kind of laugh you make when you know you’re the butt of the joke, and you feel nothing but awkwardness so you laugh because you don’t want them to see you cry.

But God doesn’t see things the way we see them. With God all things are possible! Those dreams you put on a shelf for “someday,” those dreams that just have no way they’re going to come true now, those dreams that you’ve grown too old for but were the sole focus of your heart for so very, very long…..God wants to breathe new life into them. God wants to pick them up and dust them off and tell you to go ahead and dream big again!

God came through for Sarah with the birth of her son, Isaac. A year later, Sarah was laughing with joy and not with sorrow and shame.

As we step into a new year, we need to remember that God is a God of life and life abundantly! He doesn’t want you just muddling through. He isn’t looking to punish you. You haven’t gone too far or done too much (or not enough). You aren’t too young or too old. In fact, God wants you to remove the word “too” from your vocabulary! Remember just a few chapters ago in Genesis, we read that we were handcrafted by God! We are perfectly created to fulfill the plans that God has for us.

So what dreams have you let die along the way? Is it time to resurrect them again? Is it time to dust them off and breathe some hope upon them? You may just find yourself laughing with joy in the near future, just like Sarah.

Prayer: Father, Today I come to you with the dreams I’ve let go, the plans I thought I was incapable of realizing, and all the hopes I thought had passed me by long ago. Are there any that you want to breathe new life into? What, in my life, would you like to resurrect today? I know with you all things are possible. Grant me, Father, the same miracle you gave to Sarah: the miracle of a new beginning. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.