Isaac

The Gospel this Sunday (in the one-year series) was from Matthew 6. Jesus invites us to look at how He takes care of everything He has made, and He promises that He will take care of us because we are so much more valuable than the birds and the flowers. Why worry when God is on our side, a God who daily and richly provides us with all that we need to support this body and life?

But then things get rocky. Maybe a person doesn't have plumbing, and thinks "woe is me." Maybe a person doesn't have heat in his home, and thinks God's falling down on the job of providing for him. Maybe a person doesn't have a steady (or sufficient) income, and frets over what the future holds.

And yet, Jesus promises to take care of us. So sometimes, through the power of the Absolution, a person may even have his little heart calmed from fear of what the future holds as far as temporal goods. After all, if you have no food or home, if you have no money, if your health is shot, "what can man do to me?" Jesus lives, and now is death but the gate of life immortal. To live is Christ, and to die is gain. The Lord gives; the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

But then,
sometimes,
there's another loss.

What happens when God withholds His word? (Or, at least, it appears that that is His plan.)

God promises to uphold us in the Faith. God promises to do this through the Word, and only through the Word. When it appears that God Himself is abandoning a person, when God Himself (who is Truth itself) is reneging on His promise, that makes the loss of income or home or family or friends or health seem like piddly little problems.


God had told Abraham for decades that He would send a Savior. A Savior that would come through Abraham's son. Nope, the heir of Abraham's house wasn't gonna be a good enough heir. Nope, Abraham's son by his quasi-wife wasn't gonna be the one either. It would be Isaac. THAT was the son who was the promised seed of Abraham.

Then God said, "Kill him."

We tend to look at that story and think about the obvious.

GOD said, "Kill him"??? But this God says, "You shall not murder." This God disapproves of human sacrifice. What's up with the "Kill him"??

We think of how much Abraham and Sarah loved their son. They love him as much as we love our children. When a child dies, the parents' heart is broken! How could they inflict that sort of pain on themselves?

But both those are temporal difficulties. BIG difficulties, to be sure. But still, temporal, earthly difficulties.

When God told Abraham to kill Isaac, that meant something even bigger. "I'm taking away My promise. I told you that I would send a Savior who would be the son of Isaac. Well, now I'm asking you to kill Isaac."

Think about what that meant to Abraham. For all reasonable intents and purposes, God was saying that He was changing His mind and not sending a Savior after all. No Savior for Abraham and Sarah. No Savior for the world. No atonement for sin. No way to restore communion with God.

The loss of the world's salvation and the loss of God Himself is a whole lot bigger deal eeeeven than the loss of one's dearly beloved child. But any reasonable person could see that that was the consequence of killing the son through whom the promised salvation would come.

But even when it appeared incontrovertible that God was going back on His promise, He wasn't. And Abraham trusted that God knew what He was doing. God grant us to trust Him even when there's evidence that He "doesn't care."

Zion mourns in fear and anguish,
Zion, city of our God.
"Ah," she says, "how sore I languish,
bowed beneath the chastening rod!
For my God forsook me quite
and forgot my sorry plight."

"Let not Satan make thee craven.
He can threaten but not harm.
On My hands thy name is graven,
and thy shield is My strong arm.
How, then, could it ever be
I should not remember thee,
fail to build thy walls, My city,
and look down on thee with pity."