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Abraham was sure he had heard the promise descend out of the
sky, straight from God himself. It was the promise of a son. It was the promise
that ancient loins would still bring forth life and barren wombs would finally
produce lineage. It was the promise of legacy and the possibility of honor
among a tribe built on shame for the childless. So when the promise-maker
tarried, Abraham laid down with his slave, and tried to force God’s hand. “Bless me!” his actions cried, “Bless me.”
His grandson Jacob would echo his demands decades later to
an angel that wrestled him to the ground in the middle of the desert. Holding
tight to the stranger while the sunlight touched the horizon, he demanded also,
“Bless me.”
Years after the promise was given, Abraham eventually received
a son and as a new day emerged over the cool desert night, Jacob received a new
name. For both, there was a cost. In his blessing, Jacob has his hip put out of
joint by the angel of the Lord and walks away with a limp as a permanent
reminder that no blessing comes without sacrifice. Abraham too, though he
receives his blessing, is asked to tie his son to an altar and raise a knife to
his chest. A ram is provided as an alternative, but the sacrifice of Abrahams’s
heart is already given. The real sacrifice was offered days earlier when, in
the shadows of the night, God asks Abraham to return the gift he was given, the
gift he had waited years for, the gift he was almost certain would never come. When
it finally arrives, God wants it returned to him.
“Am I enough?” God asks.
In the frailty of our longings we are Abraham and Jacob who so
often long for the gift more than the giver. We too cry “bless me” with our
eyes closed to the blessing that has already been lavished upon us. We understand
God as the Father who made us, redeemed us, and is waiting for us to return home.
But we forget he is also the Father who disciplines, tests, shapes and refines.
We want children without having to build altars and we want to be given new
names without broken hips.
And so it is, at times, that we all might find ourselves wrestling with
strangers in the desert. Tired of waiting, growing weary of living by sightless
faith, we take the angel by the hand, or walk our slave to the bedroom, and try
to bring about a gift that cannot be taken by force. We rage against God’s
apparent slowness and wonder loudly through word and deed if we had ever really
heard the promise in the first place. We doubt, we grow angry, impatient,
disheartened, and cynical. We stop waiting all together, and slowly begin to
forget what it is we were ever really waiting for in the first place.
And this is precisely the mountain that God desires to lead
us to. It is the place in which our own Isaac is walking with a pile of wood
tied to his back forcing us to look away lest he see our tears. It is the dark
night from which angels emerge to pin us to the ground and show us our
weakness.
Waiting is the greatest testing ground of our faith. In the
delay of receiving and in the absence of resolve we are forced to examine the
depths of our hearts like Abraham, to discern whether it was ever enough to
simply be his child without the
promise of receiving one of our own. Or like Jacob, to comprehend that God himself
already knows our name, with or without the blessing of a new one.
No blessing comes without sacrifice, and every sacrifice God
demands refines our hearts and returns our gaze to the blessing we already have
in the gift of God himself. A gift that we do not have to wait for, fight for, or sacrifice once it arrives.
