"And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of."
Genesis 22:2
There are a lot of things in the scriptures that seem challenging. This one seems similar to the killing of Laban early in the Book of Mormon. Clearly something that God has commanded people not to do, and yet, in these instances God commands it. When Peter who had remained kosher all his life was commanded to go and eat with strangers, I think it was a similar situation. All of these people had lived their lives in a certain way, obeying God, and then when God asked them to do something that was an exception to those rules, they had to examine themselves and figure out if they believed in the commandment or the living God who was really the only person who could make exceptions.
We know more details about why this would be a challenge for Abraham... because God had saved him from being sacrificed himself. That salvation was the beginning of his dedication to the Lord. He likely had stong feelings about sacrifice and perhaps about his father who had allowed it to happen. And then God asks him to betray his own son... his only son... in a similar way. And in a way that could make it seem like all God's promises were empty. He had been promised posterity numberless as the sand, and yet this was his only son.
We know, well after the fact, that this was a symbolic sacrifice, representing the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We can see that it was a test for Abraham, something that rocked him to his core, but that solidified his relationship with God, and that showed God's mercy, and made Abraham think about whether he believed that God would keep his promises. But in the moment, it was still an awful trial that he want through, getting there, proving his devotion, and being blessed with a Ram to sacrifice instead.
I think we all run into things in life that are heart-wrenching--that make us look at our lives and really test what we believe and what we know. I think it is necessary to have things like that in our lives to help us solidify who we are and what we want. We can choose to believe God only in the good times, and walk away when things seem tough, but if we do, or when we do, we don't realize who God really is. Sometimes we want him to be a sweet grandparent who ignores all of our weaknesses and loves us anyway, or a not-very-good friend who glories in our weaknesses and reinforces them, encouraging bad behavior. But God loves us much, much more than that. He loves us enough to purge us from our sins, despite the intense paid of it. He loves us enough to get us real help to save us from our addictions. He loves us enough to teach us self-restraint and to correct our cruelty.
Today, let's stay true to God, who is the only one who can teach us true goodness and pure love. Let's learn from him the difficult lessons as well as the sweet ones. As we do, we will learn to be the amazing, loving, stalwart, and deeply good people that God knows that we can be. It isn't easy to go through trials like that, but as always, joy cometh in the morning (Psalms 30:5).
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