(Written
by Sheila Gail Landgraf)
After
they had traveled for two days Abraham saw the place that God was showing him
from a distance.
You
have to wonder as Abraham plodded down the road if he was considering that
again God was asking him to “go to a place that I will show you.” Abraham had heard those words in his first
test of God. He heard them first when he
left the land of his birth and trusted God to lead him into a new place. That test had taken a different type of
courage than what Abraham was experiencing now.
This time took all of the courage that Abraham possessed. Now he was taking his only begotten son,
Isaac to another place, a place that God would show him. Both times required much faith; this last time
the most faith.
Did the
repetition of the same words he had heard from God in the past reassure Abraham
that he was still on track?
The
long walk gave Abraham lots of time to think; to be sure that he was doing the
right thing. After all he was going to
do a very unreasonable thing in the eyes of most men for God in a place that he
did not yet know of. This type of act is
not ever easy; this going to a place that you do not know to do something that
you do not totally understand.
Rabbi
Label Lam once said: “It’s woefully impossible to describe to someone a thing that is
qualitatively beyond what they have ever experienced.” This was a fair definition for what Abraham
was being asked to do. Have you ever known or been through such a situation in
your own life? Have you ever had to do a
hard thing that you knew was right but you could not explain why to
anyone? It is impossible to describe the
experience to others as you are going through it.
There are such
experiences that are positive. You can
describe a sunrise in language to someone, but until you take them out in the wee
hours of the morning and hike to the top of a mountain cliff and build a fire
and brew coffee and wait with them to see their first glimpse of the indescribable
art of God; you cannot explain this experience to them properly with words that
they will understand.
There are also such unexplainable
life experiences that are not positive experiences. You can try to explain the death of a child
to someone, but until they have had to hold their own child cold, dead and
lifeless in their own arms, they can never fully understand the agony of this loss. There are no proper words. Words do no justice to such experiences. Perhaps that is why Abraham trudged along is silence
for two whole days. You can tell someone
about something, but until they experience it for themselves, they would not ever
even begin to understand it.
Perhaps that is why
God did not say to Abraham, go exactly here or go exactly there, but God said
“go to the place where I will show you.” God knew Abraham must be allowed to concentrate
solely on this experience itself and not be concerned with the logistics or all
the unexplainable details of the experience.
So God chose the place and God set up the place before them.
God would show
Abraham all he needed to know. Abraham
just had to go. Lech Lecha. Abraham
trusted and set off on the journey. At
the end of the second day, Abraham looked up and saw the place that God had
told him to go in the distance.
Do you ever get a far away glimpse of the place where God is telling you to go, but know it is still in
the distance? Have you ever experienced
one of those Isaac moments when the task at hand that lies before you in this
place looks too hard from where you are presently standing?
Do you stop and
reconsider what you are doing?
Do you reassure
yourself now that you finally see evidence of the place God is pointing to in
your life that the experience He has been speaking to you about might just be
right on track?
People of lesser
faith lose heart here, and they turn; listening to the voices that are of the
enemy which always pop up in these places saying that your imagination is
working overtime, or you have over-analyzed the situation, or you have had too
much to drink, or you have just been to too many movies, etc. Not Abraham.
Abraham’s faith had matured to the place of simply obeying God no matter
what.
When you reach the
place where you see God’s will in the distance it is a time to wake up and take
notice, to be reassured that you are on track, and a time to keep on walking
toward God’s next experience. Should you
detour here, you might never get back on the right road. God does not make detours; all detours are made
by humans. Keep looking straight ahead,
even if the road looks too rocky or the mountain looks too high. Do not lose site of the place that God is
showing you. Walk on.
The Hebrews have a
term in their language for these types of situations, it is called Lech
Lecha. It literally means “Go!” The implied meaning is to go on in faith and
you will know it when you see it. “It”
being the will of God. This is how
Abraham found the mountain where God told him to take Isaac. He knew it when he saw it. At that point he asked the other two men to wait while he and Isaac went up the
rest of the way.
