TorahMama: Vayeira

When God tells Abraham that Sarah will bear a child soon, the text says that Sarah laughed “within herself.”

Ah, what a way to begin parenthood, with laughter. Tradition tells that Sarah and Abraham struggled with infertility, and we know how difficult the entrance into parenthood can be for so many of us. But to begin with laughter? To lead with humor…to be able to find the funny side, the joke, the laugh-til-you-cry of it all….truly is a gift. I like to imagine Abraham and Sarah as carrying that laughter through their lives, holding onto the joy that Isaac brought to them and lifting that up.

We know that their lives weren’t perfect, and of course we know that there were struggles. But I do like to imagine that Sarah’s laughter carried them through some of it, that her ability to find even God’s words just a little bit funny helped her to use her biting wit to help her cope with some of the difficulty of her life. Sometimes you just gotta laugh….

TorahMama is a new attempt to blog weekly on the Torah portion of the week. (I had considered starting a new blog but decided to just keep moving along on this one...)