Stump is a blogging project of Claremont Presbyterian Church
What is this worth to you? Would you pay good money for it? Do time for it? Endure pain? Inflict pain?
That’s the question: what is this worth to you? It’s a test.
The forbidden fruit isn’t a test but a warning. The ark isn’t a test but a command. The ram, though? That’s a test.
“Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”
That’s the test. So Abraham rose and sharpened his #2 pencil; Abraham led innocent Isaac by the hand, and Abraham bound that boy to an altar. Abraham elevated his blade with intent to kill.
The meaning of the story is plain, and neither Jewish nor Christian tradition has interpreted it in any way other than an affirmation of Abraham’s great faith, his willingness to snuff out the dearest thing in his life for God’s sake. It all adds up. Abraham passed the test.
What is this worth to you? Can there be a cost too great to pay? To ask?
Because it begs for a parental analogy, I recognize that I test my daughter all the time. I test her six year-old willingness to do as I ask and to forego the things she loves for my sake. Each request to come downstairs for dinner commands a sacrifice.
Yet I often relent in my tests because the things she loves make up who she is, and I love her. Laura minus her loves is less than Laura.
Does God really want an Isaac-less Abraham?
God, how much is Abraham’s fealty worth to you? Are you who you say you are if, in order to be true, your man must bleed his own flesh to death?
The bleating ram in the thicket answers back, and the deed is left undone. But would it have been? Even if not, do you ever really come back from that precipice? Does Abraham? Does Isaac? Does God?
And where in the Dickens is Sarah?
YoRocko! 
This story leads me to question the depth of my own faith. Would I be willing to sacrifice my own child for my faith? What about Christians in countries where Christianity is persecuted? Do Christians in Iraq or Syria or Pakistan, for example, face this dilemma each day as they try to protect their children and still live as Christians?
My son says you can never have too much ram. It’s worth alot, He recommends paying good money for it, otherwise you’ll have to endure pain and suffering.RAM, Random Access Memory. With your opening lines, I thought you were heading that direction too…
I don’t think Sarah was told what was going on, She thought he was out running errands, imagine when he came home and said, “Honey, a funny thing happened today…”
Is this not what God does for us with Jesus?
Donna
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That is a traditional Christian interpretation, yes.
You mean Sarah is reading “The Christmas Carol” already?
Carolyn