Clothesline 305 "Trust Beyond Understanding"

Sometimes following God’s will isn’t easy. There are multiple stories of the saints who went through so many trying times in order to follow God. Then and now, it always comes down to the freedom of choice. We were given free will to choose our own way or God’s way. But God never asks anything of us that we wasn’t willing to give Himself.

Take the story of Abraham. Abraham was old and his wife Sarah was old, but God promised Abraham that he would have a son. Many years went by—there was no son—yet Abraham still believed that God would fulfill his promise. And he did! Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah. But God had yet another test, another opportunity for Abraham to trust God. An angel appeared to Abraham: “Abraham, take your son Isaac and sacrifice him to the Lord.” Surely, Abraham had much trepidation about carrying out such a request. But on that day Abraham calls Isaac and he tells him that they are going to the land of Moriah to offer sacrifice to the Lord. Isaac knows that the worship of God is a privilege, and he would follow his father anywhere. So they gather the wood and the fire and begin the journey to Moriah. When Isaac thinks they have forgotten the “living sacrifice” to offer to God, he asks his father, and his father replies, “God Himself will provide the lamb for the offering, my son.” Do you hear the New Testament promise of another sacrifice to come? Do you sense the powerful connection between the Old Law and the New?

Abraham was being asked to sacrifice his only son to God, the son that was promised to him by God himself. He could have succumbed to his own will and ignored God’s direct order. It would have been the normal, sensible thing to do! But he didn’t! He had trust in God without limits. And God was true to who God is: a loving, caring, Father, who allows us to make choices and doesn’t tempt us beyond what we can endure. God stops Abraham from sacrificing his son…and many years later, in response to men who would choose their own will before God’s, another living sacrifice was made…this time, to save all those who would put their own will before God’s.

So, here we are, with only one answer to everything we cannot understand: trust in God above all else. We believe God loves us in ways we can never understand. We attempt to be the face of Jesus to all those we encounter. And we pray for the same kind of trust that Abraham had when he chose to follow God above all else.

All the religious education in the world, will never bring us to an understanding of the mind of God. But this we know: God’s ways and methods are not our ways and methods, but when all is said and done, His Way is the only Way!