Abraham and Isaac

Genesis 22:1-19

After 80 barren years, years of waiting, and waiting. Years of trusting God would be faithful in His promises. Years of consoling his wife who bore no children. Years that went by with no harvest. Years. Not days or hours or even months. Abraham waited 80 years for the result of God’s promise that his offspring would be many. He waited not unfaithfully, but with a pure heart. He trusted and finally God spoke and they bore a child. Such joy and fulfillment they must have felt in those moments. The 80 years must have felt worthwhile in light of Isaac’s birth. No longer years wasted, years of disappointment. I bet once they were pregnant the 80 years felt small. Finally their promises were real. No longer did they have to waver and trust with their eyes closed. Sarah could feel it growing inside her belly! The joy of giving birth to a promise of God makes the barren years almost not worth mentioning. Yes they waited for 80 years, but then God was faithful! They had their son. Finally they had a reason to believe that God really was going to give offspring too many to count. Like the stars in the sky! Now they could see that promise coming to life. They could feel it, and touch it. They were parents to it. Everything changed.

So when Abraham left the house that morning, on his way to the altar with Isaac I cannot imagine the fear, the sorrow, and the depth of agony in his heart. When he reached out his hand with the knife, seeking to obey the command God gave him, to slaughter his only son; I cannot believe he had the strength to raise his arm up in the air. After all these years of faithfully waiting could God really ask him to kill his only son! Isaac would have been crying, “What is going on! Dad why do you have a knife! Where is the lamb? Where is the sacrifice?” Abraham trusted saying son, God will provide the sacrifice. But then up his arm goes, knife in hand. To kill the very gift God had given him. But why? Why does God ask us to bring to him in sacrifice the very things he has given us? Yes this was a picture of what God was going to do for us in Christ. But why in the world does Abraham, a faithful servant to God, have to take his son, lay him on an altar and agree to kill him?

God’s promises and gifts are a funny thing. We can be so patient, we can wait and wait and rely solely on the strength of the Lord. But when we finally get what we waited for we grasp it so tightly and we vow never to let go. We wait for financial blessing, and then we stash money away and vow never to be that desperate again. Or we wait for direction and then head steadfast down the path and vow never to turn around. We wait for God to give us something, and then we make that very thing our idol. We wait 80 barren long years and then hold so tightly to that child vowing that nothing can take them away from us. So what does God do? He asks us to step out in faith and lay the very thing back down on the altar to Him.

I don’t know if that is what happened or not. All I know is one day I was thankful for a gift I felt so strongly came from Him, and then time passed and I had so firmly attached myself to it that the thought of it being gone made my heart race with anxiety and fear. I took something He gave me, I made it my own, and I vowed to make it work at all costs. But what if the cost was growth? Even then would I keep it? What if keeping it meant missing other things God had for me? What if hanging on meant letting go of not just good things, but God’s best plan. Would I hold on even then? Yes, I would. Because I took something that was His to give, and I set it before me as a path to follow. I let it determine my every move, my week, my month, and my years to come. All the while claiming to be following God’s leading, I had become my own leader, and the gift was my destination. Something that was never bad, never sinful, never an idol, something really good and pure and even strong, became something He needed me to let go of in order that He may lead me. The path I had made for myself became a direction that if I were to continue on it I would be okay, I would be happy, I would be loved, but I would be turning down the upward call of God in Christ. The sound of God saying come deeper, rise above, I would have to silence it in order to choose my own way. When this thought entered my mind I said go away doubt. I am on this path and I have this gift in my hands, and I won’t doubt it now. I told myself to take heart, and that good things were ahead. But the thought would not leave me that maybe there was an altar ahead of me.

An hour. It took me an hour to be able to surrender this thought to God. This thought that maybe, just maybe there was a small chance this gift had changed from a gift, into something I would not give up. That maybe I hadn’t been letting God speak to me about this gift anymore because of the possibility of having to let go. Maybe I had become so attached to this gift, and all the plans that come with it, that I would rather make it work at any price than to have God’s will above my own. But can’t I have both! I argued with God. I will surrender it if it means I get to keep it! I will carry my only son up the hill to the altar, but only if you promise to provide a ram and let me keep him! He would not leave me. Restless, anxious, I threw my hands up, closed my eyes, shut out every thought, every voice saying ‘keep it’ and I took my hands away. I let go of my grip. It didn’t fall right away. But with tearing and pulling and breaking. Because letting go of our will, our plans, the things we love, it hurts.

It hurts to let go. It hurts us and it hurts others. It is something we do completely alone. We cannot explain to others why we let go of what was good. Abraham could not explain to Sarah where he was taking Isaac. Because in the secret place, between our hearts and His, there is no logic, no explanation. We are utterly alone. Left to trust in this God who is so relentless, who pursues us even when we are bound to other things. We are left to trust a God who demands our whole heart, even when part of us becomes attached to something good. Something kind. Something filled with love. Even then, He thwarts our paths. He demands we lay it down raise our arm and sacrifice it back to him.

So sometimes our sacrifices end with God’s provision and a celebration, we go home with our son Isaac on our backs like Abraham and we rejoice, for we let go in sacrifice and it was His will for us to keep it. But sometimes we finally lift our grasp on something, we hope secretly for our will to match His, but with pain and sorrow we hear Him call us to something else.

When I finally loosened my grip on God’s blessing, His promises, and His gifts I knew in my heart that I had been tying myself there for some time, that I had been making choices for myself and making plans. That I was taking something initially given from Him and that no longer could I get closer to His heart with this thing in my hands. It was like the thing I loved, the blessing I cherished, the very heart of what I wanted and dreamed of, was stopping me from even seeing the light shine from the face of my Beloved.

So my ‘will’ raised up its hands, and my ‘rights’ cried in protest and I felt my heart let go of something that was very much embedded within me. I heard the whispers and the why’s but as I fell into pieces I felt the hands of my Potter grab a hold of my melting self and whisper to me:

 “When did you stop believing in my best for you? Since when do you settle for only some of me in a plan? When did you remove your name among the list of people in a generation willing to give up anything and everything if it means more of me? When did you start thinking that things could be good on their own, without me in them? Beloved, I have a plan, a plan that goes a different way than this. A plan that involves all of Me not just my hand or my face. But my whole heart. If you trust me, I will bring you that plan, and believe, beloved, that my plan is always best, for everyone. If you trust me, if you step out and trust that I am the Great Father who knows best for His children, then so will I be. In your heart, yes, but also for those you care about.”

So did I stop loving the gift from my Father? No I did not for a second. Did I stop caring, or just loose hope or patience? Did I just give up or did I throw up the white flag in surrender? No, I never stopped fighting for the promise from God, I kept going and going. I waited the 80 years, but for reasons too big for me to fathom God spoke to me and to my heart and told me His will involves something else. I didn’t want other things, I wanted this! My flesh and my heart want that gift. It was mine. It was God given and it was good.

But I am not my own, I was bought at a price. I do not live but He lives within me. I do not entrust my heart to people, and I especially do not trust myself. I trust in my Lord Jesus Christ and I know He is faithful. He always has been. I don’t know why I hurt people, or how to avoid it. I never thought I would be in this place again, I never thought I would be starting all over. I thought all my steps were being chosen. And I certainly did not think that if I followed the Lord with all my heart I would encounter pain ever again. But God has never given me hope of an easy and carefree logical life. He has promised me all of himself. I have prayed every day for the past year that He would keep pursuing me until He has every last ounce of my being, and I have put my heart into the hands of a Potter who will mold me into perfection, into the hands of someone whose ways are higher than my own. And now, in the confusion and clouds, I will lift my hands and put my last seed of faith into the same hand that hold me as I weep. I undo the ties that I loved, and let go of the gift I had waited for, trusting that although it seemed perfect, His will is best. I give it over to Him with my head down, humbled.

I do not know very much right now. I do not know what changed or what my future looks like, or what next week will bring. I do not know how to pick myself up and smile when I remember again the changes my sleep let me forget. But I do know that I will not let myself trust in my own understanding, I cannot place my guidance in my own hands or anyone else’s. The only thing I have to go on is the voice and the heart of my Father. I am anxious and weak, Satan prowls like a wolf outside my gates of weakness, I am lonely and afraid and I have hurt people I love. I may not belong in the same way as before, and I may not be secure anymore, or for a while. But I have chosen to follow Jesus. And I have claimed it boldly for too long to stop now. I declare that I will do what He asks of me no matter what, and by His grace, I must live what I so flippantly boast. I must follow Him, when it is obvious, when it is easy, when it is clear and logical. I must follow Him. When I am low and it is natural to run into His comfort. But I must also follow Him to the altar, where up ahead I can see the stone and the knife to lay down the thing I have waited for, even then, when people question, when the physical reasoning seems weak or when the choice seems bizarre and irrational. Especially then, I must. Not because I have to, not because He is angry or demanding, not because I fear His wrath. No, I must follow Him despite my flesh and my desire to turn around because I have gone my own way before and I have spent some time in my own paths. I can testify that until my heart was found by His, I was blind. I was unsatisfied. My heart has seen too much of Him, I know too much of His goodness that I cannot let myself turn away until I see all of Him. I cannot rearrange my priorities to allow for more of something else if it means less of Him. I just can’t. I have to go with this one thing. For never before have I been let down by Him. He has proved to be faithful time after time, and regardless of the pain I feel as I change directions, I have to follow my Saviour.

Sometimes our paths are good and promising, sometimes they are wrong, sometimes they end in fulfilment, sometimes they end in sacrifice. Sometimes they seem perfect. But God is faithful always.

Christianity will not, it cannot, be something on a back burner in my heart. I choose Jesus when it is easy, and when it is hard, and when it looks impossible. He cannot be partially in us. He is a consuming fire and if we fully trust Him and choose to say yes, He must be everything.

Nothing can hold us back from Him, not even really good, really pure, and really promising things. He asks us to set Him as a seal over our hearts, on our arms. His love is as jealously demanding at the grave. He will decide the paths and He will place our feet and remove them as He wishes. His ways are higher than our ways. But His plan always brings us the greatest joy. His plan is never less than ours. With anything He asks us to leave behind, in Him is the goodness that is never lacking, the river that never runs dry. There is nothing in our lives that is too worthy to be laid before Him. There is nothing too valuable to choose over Him. Nothing too expensive, no amount of time or energy, or love, or prayers poured into something makes it too good to keep from Him. Abraham laid down his precious only son, Mary Magdalene poured out her expensive perfume, Peter left his family and fishing job, Mary, Jesus’s mother, left her reputation and pride, and Jesus left His throne in heaven and became for us a sacrifice. I want my name, all of our names to be added to this list. Of people who are willing to follow God, no matter what it demands. And as we do this, we can be absolutely sure that His reasons are love and that He has more to offer us than we ever can offer ourselves. In Him is more worth than anything we could ever present to the altar.

Let us be named in a generation that is rising above, a generation that is willing to follow Him even when it is hard. Let us trust Him to take care of the ones we move away from and the things we let go of, let us seek fully after the One who called us by name and told us to leave it all and follow Him. Let us carry our Isaac to the altar trusting that no matter the outcome, we serve a God of steadfast love and faithfulness.

Martina Sobey