Do not do the least thing to your son, for now I know how devoted you are to God. God’s test of Abraham was as tough as they come. A decade or so after the birth of Isaac, perhaps the happiest moment in his life, Abraham receives a request from God to sacrifice to God his only son. While we do not know exactly what was going on inside Abraham’s head as he was trying to make sense of God’s request, we can guess that it was a trying moment for him as any parent would testify. We might think that it was an easy decision for Abraham to make owing to the fact that he was God’s friend. But I also think that Abraham’s friendship with God is what might have made the request more unusual and complicated. What was God trying to prove? Was God trying to pull a fast one on him? Was God simply trying to see Abraham’s reaction or hurt his feelings? A friend would know better than to make such an impossible request. Abraham, perhaps after some soul searching, decided to give in to God’s request. His decision was informed not in the least by the trust that he had cultivated. He trusted that the Lord would provide for his needs, including descendants, no matter what was to happen to Isaac.
The story of Abraham’s near-offering of his son is not an easy one to wrap one’s head around. Any parent would cringe at the mere thought of such a request. However, we should not let its apparent ‘unusualness’ hinder us from connecting it to our own experiences. In our own unique ways, we too have found ourselves in situations similar to that of Abraham. We might have found ourselves wanting to hold on to what needs to be let go of due to its apparent goodness. Sometimes we refuse to listen to God asking us to knock on another door because we do not know what is behind the door. Abraham didn’t know what God was going to do or how God was going to fulfill his promises to him, but he trusted nonetheless. When God told him to knock on that other door, he didn’t ask God to let him have a ‘peek’ first to see if what was behind that door was worth substituting with Isaac. He simply trusted in the Lord. The Lord had provided for him in the past. The same Lord would provide for him in the future. That is what trust is all about.