{"id":1767,"date":"2016-06-04T03:41:05","date_gmt":"2016-06-04T10:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/?p=1767"},"modified":"2016-06-04T03:42:48","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T10:42:48","slug":"they-named-him-laughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=1767","title":{"rendered":"They Named Him Laughter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x15013.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x15013.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x1501\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1768\" \/><\/a>The Old Testament character Abraham was 75 years old when the Lord called him to move to a land he had never visited. He went, sight unseen.<\/p>\n<p>And Abraham was 100 when he finally received the promised heir through whom he would become the \u201cfather of many nations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A year earlier he had laughed at the prospect. How could his barren wife give birth at 90? Sarah laughed too.<\/p>\n<p>God responded with what has become one of the most cherished verses in the Bible: \u201cIs anything too difficult for the Lord\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>And so God gave them Isaac. His name meant laughter\u2014and he was\u2014a source of joy and laughter for this senior couple way past their prime.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll think of Abraham when aging gets hard, when facing barren times, in need of a miracle, in need of some laughter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs anything too difficult for the Lord\u201d (Genesis 18:14)? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Old Testament character Abraham was 75 years old when the Lord called him to move to a land he had never visited. He went, sight unseen. And Abraham was 100 when he finally received the promised heir through whom he would become the \u201cfather of many nations.\u201d A year earlier he had laughed at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1767"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1770,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767\/revisions\/1770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}