Back and Forth

            Genesis 19 tells how the Lord kept His promise to Abraham about 10 righteous people in Sodom.  In Genesis 20, with a firm date for the birth of Isaac in their heads, Abraham and Sarah return God’s favor by telling a familiar half-truth:  “She’s my sister.”  Why is it that Abraham so refuses to trust the Lord?  Who knows, except that he’s a human and we all have those problems.

            The Lord is ridiculously faithful to Abraham, though, and the child is born right on schedule.  And what an event it is:  joyful, filled with laughter and vindication.  The Lord had turned Sarah’s chortle of skepticism into a full-on belly laugh of joy.  Who would have said, indeed!  (There’s a great play on words in the story, because the name Isaac sounds a great deal like “laughter” in Hebrew.)

            In the end, God’s faithfulness finally blossoms into faith on Abraham’s part, too.  “Some time later,” we don’t know how long—the Lord demanded Isaac back.  Most of our Western pictures portray Isaac as a child, but Jewish tradition portrays Isaac as a man full grown, perhaps 30 years old.  Now, that means that Abraham would have been 130 and Sarah 120, and the next chapter tells us that Sarah died when she was 127.  If Abraham had had a hard time thinking that God would give him a son at 100, imagine how much harder that would be at 130!  Yet, at last, Abraham is willing to trust the Lord.

            Why this new found willingness?  Two pieces of evidence show us what was on Abraham’s mind.  First, Genesis 21:12 contains a promise that Abraham took to heart:  “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”  Abraham believed that somehow God was going to keep that promise!  Second, Hebrews 11:19 says, “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead.”  So, even if Isaac was killed, God would give him back to his father.

            After all the ups and downs, backs and forths, of Abraham’s struggle to trust the Lord, finally, at the end, he was willing to commit his ways, his family, and his future to the Lord.

            What does it take us to give similar trust to the Lord?  One of my favorite authors is a man named Eugene Petersen, a Presbyterian pastor.  In one of his earliest books, he co-opted a phrase from a notorious atheist, Frederick Nietzsche, “a long obedience in the same direction.”  Petersen basically said, “Look, Nietzsche had this right:  what is necessary for the Christian is the long, hard journey of discipleship.”  There’s no shortcut to Abraham’s kind of faith; there’s no magic pill or Bible verse that grants it.  If we long to have the same radical trust that Abraham finally came to, then we’ll have to follow God through our ups and downs, around our backs and forths, and maybe, we’ll come to a moment in our faith, when we will say without hesitation and against the world’s better judgments, “Yes, Lord.”