Disturbing Faith

When I read the story in Genesis 22, where Abraham believes God is asking him to sacrifice Isaac, I'm disturbed. I want to skip to the end where God provides a ram, and Isaac is saved. But, the end is less comforting than I'd like it to be. Questions remain. Would God really ask this? How terrified must Isaac have been when he realized that he was the intended sacrifice? Are faith and trust really what we're supposed to learn from this story?

It's a three-day journey to the place of sacrifice, and according to many theologians, Isaac is at least in his late teens, possibly a young adult. So Isaac is more than old enough to know what's going on. Old enough that life will never be the same - for any of them. Abraham does not return home to Sarah, and Isaac neither goes home to his mother nor stays with Abraham. In the very next chapter Sarah dies. This family of faith seems destroyed. Where's the hope? What should we take from this?

Life happens. People don't always behave as we'd like, or hope. God's will is not always clear. We don't always understand.

But, thankfully, God does not leave us to our hopeless circumstances, or our helpless states of mind. God is faithful.

For the devoted and the deluded there is a ram in the bush.

May God always have mercy on us.

1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

and day after day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,

4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”