November 13: Of Fathers, Fear and Faith

Ezekiel 27:1-28:26

Hebrews 11:17-31

Psalm 111:1-10

Proverbs 27:15-16

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice.  He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, "it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." - Hebrews 11:17

Our youngest turned 16 the other day.  He isn't all that tall, but he is massive.  Strong.  He swims for a team, so very fit.  At sixteen, with a scraggly goatee he is trying to grow out, he is strong enough to climb a mountain with a load of wood on his back, like Isaac did.  And he is at the beginning of the range of ages historians suggest Isaac was when Abraham agreed to sacrifice him, as God had commanded.

Reading the first line in today's NT reading, and then hugging my son tonight, it hit me.  It hit me how well Abraham must have known the Lord, to quell the rebellion of a father's love for his son, to set aside the knowledge of his aged wife and the singular miracle of his late birth, to look past what was conceivable and declare with conviction that, though he couldn't possibly know how, God's promise that he would have descendants that would outnumber the stars was STILL going to come to pass.

Perhaps hardest of all, he had to have known the Lord so well that he was able to look at his only beloved son, and entrust him to God, to trust that God loved him more than Abraham did, despite what He had asked Abraham to do.  

I don't have that faith. I'm just calling a spade a spade, straight up, I don't.  But I'll tell you what, if having that kind of faith means God tests you this way - and remember, in Abraham's mind, Isaac was a dead man walking.  He had no idea God was going to spare Isaac - if he did, it wouldn't have been a demonstration of faith! - if having that faith means God tests you this way, I am not sure I want it.  Not just because I fear the test, I also fear I would fail it.  

This reading is timely.  The pastor of my parents' church just completed a 9 sermon series on raising Godly children.  The final step was to entrust them to the Lord, who is always going to love them more and nurture them more than parents ever could, in ways we might not be able to understand.  Which is why, all the more, for our children's sakes, we, their parents, have to get to know the Lord deeply, intimately, to a point our faith is independent of our circumstances.

Father, as the father of the possessed boy cried, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief."  The children we love are in the best care when they are in Your care.  Give us such faith that we never become impediments to the development of their relationship with You.