The business of turning mourning into dancing

“So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’" – Gen. 18:12

“Now Sarah said, ‘God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.’" – Gen. 21:6

I was reading these passages a week or so ago and was struck by the irony that Sarah scoffingly laughed at the suggestion that she would bear a child in her old age, when announced by the divine visitors that came to see she and her husband Abraham. Then a couple of chapters later in Genesis, when Sarah indeed does bear a child; she says that God has brought laughter to her – and others will laugh with her in the great joy of her having bourn a child.

I don’t know if Sarah hearkened back to that first scoffing laugh as she invited her friends to laugh with joy with her. But the irony of the situation must not have been lost on her because the meaning of Isaac is “to laugh” or “he laughs.”

Recently World Vision went into the camps where they work (this refugee “city” is divided into distinct, geographically delineated camps – hence the nutrition clinic in Camp 3) and asked what their prayer concerns were. Here is what the refugees came up with:

It strikes me that these concerns show the heart of the Rohingya people. The prayers of a mother for her child to have a good school to go to aren’t foreign to us. The entreaty that God would allow them to return to Burma as citizens is one with which not many of us can identify (with our passports in hand).

The joy of a child in one of the Nutrition clinics

I have taken to praying that the Lord will create a future with hope for the Rohingya (from Jer. 29:11). He has done this before. In the book of Esther we read that God turned the Jewish people’s calamitous situation into a cause for celebration when it speaks of: “…the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday….” This is part of the business of God – turning mourning into dancing and clothing the downtrodden with joy (Ps 30:11).

So I have begun to envision the time when, like Sarah of old, the Rohingya will invite people to laugh in joy with them as they experience the future God desires for them. It is a difficult vision for me to grasp at this point. But I yearn for it in the faith that God will create a future with hope for this people.

Thanks for praying with the Rohingya (and their specific prayer concerns) and for them!