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09.04.2026
I want to be rewarded for my great big act of sacrifice. I want the divine to do something to bring him back to me, since I gave him up in submission to his imperatives, many of which I find easy to understand and ever so difficult to agree with. I gave him up; I caused him to resent me, get angry at me, and walk out of my life. This decision did nothing short of wreaking havoc on my mind. I'm not good at not looking back. I miss him and want to do whatever I can to keep him in my sight.
In the book of Genesis, God tells Abraham that he will make him into a great nation. God fulfills that promise when he is a hundred years old by giving him Isaac. Then one day, God tells Abraham to "take your son, your only son, whom you love," and offer him as a burnt sacrifice, implying his death; implying that Abraham would have to do the act of killing his own kid. Abraham leaves the morning after. He travels with a donkey, two servants, and of course, the son, whom he would have killed. On the third day, Abraham sees the mountain on which he would kill his son. They climb up, and Isaac calls out, "My Father!" and asks him where the offering is. Abraham tells him, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” When they get to the place God told him to be, he builds an altar, lays down the wood, binds up his son, and puts him down on the altar. Just as he is about to kill Isaac, God stops him and provides for him a ram to kill instead.
I wonder what went through Abraham's mind during those three days while he traveled to Moriah. Did he hope that God would change his mind? What about Sarah? How would he explain this to her? Did he think back to when God told him that his divine promise to him would be fulfilled through his son Isaac? Did he, at any point, second-guess those promises? If so, which ones? Was he counting down the days until Isaac would no longer be in his life? I wonder if Abraham could even look Isaac in the eyes as he was binding him up to slaughter him. I wonder if Isaac ever cried or asked Abraham what he's doing.
"No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly." 자상아, I hope that the good thing that God does not withhold from me is you. He never promised me you, so I can't base any of my thoughts, words, or deeds on that assumption. Yet the human in me wants you still and hopes that you would be the means by which God fulfills his promise to me to satisfy those who "hunger and thirst for righteousness." I'm doing my best to trust that very promise, even though I don't fully understand the mechanisms by which it would come to fruition. "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.'" I pray that the founder and perfecter of my faith will enable me to keep looking to him, to be able and willing to withstand more nights like yesterday's, if only to desire him more.