Obedience and Sacrifice

They traveled for three days. Isaac was glad for the change of scenery, but Abraham rode without a word. On the third day they entered the mountains and Abraham called a halt. He squinted into the cliffs above them. “Stay here,” he commanded the servants. “Isaac and I will go on alone and worship. Wait for us to return to you.”

Abraham unloaded the wood and handed it to Isaac. He unfastened his knife from the saddlebags. He took the kettle of coals in his hands. “This way,” he nodded, and father and son picked their way up the mountainside. Within a few minutes the servants and donkeys were far below.

“My father?” 

“Here I am son.”

“We have the wood and the fire, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

Abraham stopped. He was panting, leaning on his staff. His grey eyes searched the cliffs above them. He’d come a long way with God; Isaac was just beginning. He turned and looked full on the face of the son he loved “My son,” he would say it and hope it proved true, “God will provide himself a lamb.” Abraham adjusted his pack. “Let’s keep moving.”

At last they came to a level area quite near the top of the mountain. There were stones in abundance here and Abraham rolled them together. He was about to let Isaac stack them this time, but then it felt like something the father should do. In the end they worked together stacking stones and packing dirt in around them. They laid the wood on the altar. 

Abraham sat down and pulled some cord from his pack. He called to Isaac. “My son, God is asking for you to be the sacrifice this time.”

“But,” Isaac grew white, “this is…is there no other way?”

“Those are the questions I’ve asked myself for the last three days, boy.” Tears came into Abraham’s voice. “Was sure something would work out. But it hasn’t. And what God says, we do.”

Isaac was silent a long time. Who was this God of his grandpa father? At last he came to Abraham and held his hands out. “Not my will, but yours be done,” he whispered.

Abraham held his son close for a long minute. Then he bound him hand and foot and laid him on the altar. He had no hopes or dreams of his own, only a blind determination to do what God said. Abraham slipped his knife from the sheath and held it high over Isaac. His hand was trembling. He closed his eyes.

And God was talking again. “Abraham. Abraham!” He was shouting this time, and at the voice of God, Abraham collapsed upon the altar and his sacrifice.

“Here I am Lord,” the words were muddled.

“Don’t kill your boy. Don’t do anything to him. For now I know that you truly fear me, because you would sacrifice your son, your only son Isaac if I asked you to.” God spoke and was gone. Father and son heard his voice. 

Abraham stood and there on the other side of the altar was a ram, his horns caught in the thicket. He unbound his son. He took the ram and offered him upon the altar. Isaac and Abraham stood close together by the side of the altar. “In the Lord’s mountain, it shall be seen.”

God was speaking the second time. “By myself have I sworn,” he said, “that because you have done this and not withheld your only son from me, your seed will be as many as the sand of the sea and as the stars of heaven. Your children will flourish even in the gate of their enemies. And in you shall all nations of the earth be blessed.”

Abraham and Isaac descended the mountain hand in hand. Behind them, the last smoke of the sacrifice twisted into the sky. God had spoken. Abraham had obeyed. And when God spoke on this mountain Isaac had heard as well; Isaac, the son of hope and laughter, through whom would come a blessing for all the nations.

The Holy Father Tests Abraham

It seemed that everywhere Abraham went he built an altar. He loved to sacrifice to his God. And the Holy Father had been good to him. Abraham’s herds of cows and flocks of sheep covered the plains. His wife Sarah was happy, she had a son. Isaac was grown into a young man now, and he was the pride and joy of both his parents. “Yes,” Abraham thought, “Isaac my boy has made my life worth living and filled my old age with happiness.” Abraham was lying in the back of the tent in the heat of the day. He was sleepy; everything seemed right with his world. It hadn’t been easy to see Ishmael be sent away so many years ago; but compared to Isaac, the son of the Egyptian was no son at all. Isaac was hope and promise, the son of laughter, the father to be of many nations.

Abraham’s head nodded, his eyes fell shut, and he dreamed. Suddenly God was speaking to him.

“Abraham.”

His eyes opened; he stared at the tent fabric stretched above him. “Here I am, Lord.” He sat up.

“Abraham, I am the Holy Father,” God said. “Take now your son, your only true son whose name is Isaac. Take this son whom you love and offer him to me as a burnt offering on a mountain in the land of Moriah.” 

Abraham fell back to the tent floor. He groaned and put his head in his hands. Must an old man suffer still? His mind moved back over every altar he had built to God. His ears heard again the promise, “nations will you bare, yea kings will you bare. Your children will be as many as the stars of the sky and as the sand of the sea.” Abraham remembered his confusion every time God had promised him a son. He remembered his frustration with every passing year. And somewhere in his heart he had always wondered… the pain was as fresh as it was thirty-some years ago. Who really was this Holy Father? Could God be trusted? Five minutes ago, Abraham was sure of it. Now his world had fallen from under him.

For an hour Abraham lay on his face in the back of the tent. What would Sarah say? The silly old woman was liable to have a heart attack at the news. How could he take Isaac from her at the end of her days? Who was God to do such a thing? For the last thirty years Sarah had doted over Isaac as a mothering grandma. He couldn’t tell her. No, he’d sneak off with Isaac. And maybe, Abraham shook his head, maybe God would work something out. He’d tell Sarah God wanted him to make a sacrifice in the mountains. Isaac too. The boy had twice the strength of his grandpa father. He’d tell them it was going to be a sacrifice. Would God carry through with this and take away the son of his old age?

But to Abraham, the words of God were not to be questioned. They were to be obeyed. If God wanted to blow up this whole thing right here and now that was God’s business. If God wanted Isaac to be burnt and Sarah to die of a broken heart, who was he, Abraham, to stand in the way? In all these years, the only thing he had figured out about God was that God couldn’t be figured out. Sand and stars and hundred-year-old parents holding newborns. God had spoken. God would be obeyed.

The next morning, Abraham was up before the sun. He gathered some wood from the stash behind the tent and put it on a donkey. He took some coals from the cooking fire and covered them in a traveling kettle. He roused two of his servants. He called Isaac from his sleep. Sarah stood at the tent door. She laid a basket of food and a flask of water on his arm. She kissed Isaac goodbye. “Now keep your eyes open for snakes and lions,” she warned.

Isaac laughed at her. “Ma, you talk like I’m ten instead of thirty.”

“You’ll always be my baby,” she reminded him. “Don’t take any risks in those mountains and make sure you bring your old father safe home with you.” 

The donkeys brayed; and Abraham, Isaac, and two servants set off into the fog of first light. 

Isaac, the Son of Promise.

The seasons continued on after Sodom was destroyed. The words God had spoken finally came to pass. When Abraham was one hundred years old, Sarah had a baby boy, and they named him Isaac. 

Sarah lifted Isaac, wrinkled and pink, into the early light of morning. His toothless mouth opened. Sarah loved him. And she laughed. In many ways he was a little copy of herself. Wrinkled and toothless. It seemed right: Isaac, too young for teeth; Sarah, too old for them.  She laughed again. It felt good to be a mother. She had born a son to Abraham in her old age. The God who promised, fulfilled His promises. The God who caused her to laugh, would bring laughter to all women through this son.

Isaac grew, and the day came when he no longer needed his mother’s milk. He was weaned and his father made a feast for him. Abraham’s servants butchered a fat calf, and Sarah herself helped with the baking of bread and sweats. Friends and neighbors came from all across the land. Abraham bustled from tent to tent, sampling the seasoning in the stew and greeting the newcomers. He was an old man with a boy’s heart. God had been true to His word. He, Abraham, had a son, and this son would have many more sons until they shone as the stars in the sky for number.

The celebration continued throughout the day. There was plenty to eat and drink and enough cheer to wash away all the long years of waiting. 

That night, Abraham and Sarah sat again under the stars. “As many as those stars,” Abraham said. Sarah was silent. Abraham continued, “Seemed like it could never be, but every day now that boy grows bigger. And every day my joy grows with him.”

Sarah sighed, “Except for Ishmael, my joy would be complete. He was mocking our little Isaac today.” 

Abraham turned toward her, “Guess he wanted some attention too?”

“But it will never work,” Sarah went on, “He is jealous. He knows he isn’t truly the son God promised. And he’s going to keep making more trouble the older he gets. I think you should send him and Hagar away.”

“She did run away once before Ishmael was born, and God sent her back,” Abraham answered. “Gotta admit I’m attached to the boy myself by now. He is my son.” 

“But not the right one.” Sarah was upset. “Send him and his mother away from here.” She got up and went back into the tent.

Abraham’s heart hurt. Why? Couldn’t both sons grow up together? He leaned into the night wind and closed his eyes. God was speaking to him again.

“Listen to Sarah,” God said. “Send the boy and his mother away. Isaac is your son and through him shall all people be blessed.”

Abraham didn’t sleep so well that night. He rose with the first light of dawn. He took a loaf of bread and filled a bottle with water. He woke Hagar and Ishmael. “You need to leave,” he told Hagar. “God commanded it, and it must be done. Take the child and leave.”

Hagar grabbed her few belongings without a word. How would the same God who told her to return to Sarah now be telling her leave? Was God still seeing her? Abraham put the bread and bottle of water on her shoulder. She took her son’s hand, and they walked away into the wilderness.

Hagar didn’t know where to turn. Abraham had been kind to her, and she was almost at home with him and Sarah. But her real home was Egypt. She turned and wandered south through the wilderness of Beersheba. The sun rose. By afternoon it was beating down on her and the water in the bottle was gone. God wasn’t seeing her this time, she decided. Ishmael was pouting and begging for more water. The desert was silent with a tone that makes a person restless inside. It was Ishmael’s nap time, but where could a boy sleep in the wilderness?

At last, she sat down under a tree and rocked him to sleep. She laid him gently under a shrub and laid back to catch a nap herself. But she couldn’t sleep. What would happen to her? What would happen to Ishmael? No, God wasn’t seeing her. There was no water left in the bottle. Nothing but sand and shrubs for miles and miles. No hope or reason to continue on. 

Numbly she rose and moved off through the wilderness alone. She couldn’t think. But she knew she couldn’t keep a young child alive in a desert. If the boy had to die, she might as well leave him now before his suffering got worse. She stayed close enough to her son to keep an eye out for wild animals, but far enough away to keep from hearing his cries. Once more she sat down to wait. She could still see Ishmael. But she herself could not be seen. No one cared. She put her head in her hands and cried. 

Suddenly God was seeing her, and an angel was calling her name. She sat up and looked right away to where she had laid her son. The boy was now on his feet. His hands were grinding into his eyes. He was definitely crying. “Hagar,” the voice called again. “Why are you weeping? God has heard the cries of your son. Go. Take him in your arms, for I will make a great nation of him.”

Hagar turned. The angel was gone, but a spring of water was bubbling from the ground where he had stood. Hagar stooped and filled her bottle. She ran to the child and comforted him. God did see her. He always saw her. God would make of Ishmael a great nation. With water, she could keep from dying. With God she could survive.

So it was that Hagar raised her son Ishmael in the wilderness. He became an expert with a bow and arrow; and when the time came for him to marry, Hagar found a wife for him from among her own people, the Egyptians. And the years rolled on and the Ishmaelites became a mighty nation just as God had said.