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.