Reading through the parsha this week, it stood out to me that the angels who visit Avraham and Sarah are never actually called angels. They are explicitly called Men both before they arrive and after they depart.
This made me realize that it’s very possible that Sarah never knew that they were angels at all.
From Sarah’s perspective, three random strangers showed up at their camp and she and Avraham rushed and greeted them with great hospitality. Then, in gratitude for the hospitality, the strangers bless Avraham with a very strange blessing – that she, a 90 year old, post-menopausal woman, should give birth! And she laughed, at the absurdity of it all.
So why is Sarah faulted for this laugh?
Avraham and Sarah had gone on a life-long spiritual journey together. They were both fully aware that there is nothing too wondrous for Hashem to do. But there was something that Sarah didn’t fully appreciate.
There are many people who have wishes to have children, to get married, or be healed from an illness, and when it starts taking a long time, or seems impossible, the blessings of “soon by you” become a sort of torment in and of themselves. When our son was diagnosed with diabetes, a chronic and (so far) uncured condition, a lot of people wished us “refuah sheleima”, and the blessing felt a little flat, because it seemed so hopeless.
Maybe the lesson that Sarah needed to learn is that a bracha from another, no matter how illogical or impossible the bracha may seem, is a gift. You never know when the person blessing you is really an angel in disguise.
