Isaac whom you love

Genesis 22:2 He said, “Take your dear son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I’ll point out to you.”

The Message

I don’t think there is any piece of scripture harder to deal with than this one: God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, God’s gift in Abraham’s old age and the carrier of the promise that he will father a multitude. It’s enough to make some people swear off God altogether. Some take the allegorical route, pointing out that we have to let go of our children, they don’t ultimately belong to us. (But do we sacrifice them? On the altar of what?!) Others point out that child sacrifice was part of the Canaanite religions of Baal and others; this is God’s rather dramatic way of putting an end to this horrific practice. But none of these ideas address the human experience of Abraham, going with his beloved son, Isaac, whom he loves, step by step to a place of death. Kierkegaard, in his essay on this story, talks about Abraham operating on two planes of experience. On the human plane, there is no hope at all; the death of Isaac is also the death of everything Abraham longs for and has been promised. But on the spiritual plane, the supernatural plane, Abraham takes a leap to faith, that somehow, in some way, if he is faithful, God will make it all work out. In the end, God stops the knife just in time, provides a ram for the sacrifice, and all is well.

When I look at it this way, I wonder where God is calling me that requires the sacrifice of what is most precious to me. What would that be? Where might God be calling me to do something that is harsh, cruel even, but may be necessary? I think of times I have been brought to very dark and difficult places, wondering where God was taking me, only to come through it with some understanding that I couldn’t have gotten any other way. How is Abraham different by what he has gone through? No one said this walk was easy. How is God challenging me today so that I might access a faith as deep, strong and powerful as the one Abraham lives through in this story?

Prayer: Dear God, I know you call me to put my life entirely in your hands. Teach me to trust in you even when all seems lost in darkness, as well as light, so I might enjoy the full richness of life you offer me. Amen.