A Step Too Far
Over the years, I have had a great deal of trouble with this story from the Old Testament. I simply do not want to see God as “testing” Abraham (and Sarah). It seems so very mean and vindictive. Abraham and Sarah had waited to their old age to have a child. Sarah was thought to be barren. When finally, she conceives they are overjoyed. Sarah dances and sings with her handmaids. Now when their son Isaac is growing up, and their love for him growing with him. God is said to test them. Abraham is to take his son, climb a mountain, build a fire, kill his beloved son, and offer him a burnt offering to God. It just seems so arbitrary and terrible. I don’t like to think about God as testing Abraham. I don’t want to think about God testing me.
As I have prayed with this reading over the last few weeks, the one idea that has returned repeatedly is questions I ask myself. What line won’t I cross for God? What test, if God put it to me, would I shy away from and withdraw? What is one step too far in my faith journey? What would make me turn away from God?
We all know people who have turned from God and the Church. We know people who were asked to go a step too far for them, and they turned around away from God. Sometimes the events that drive people away, the events that are a step too far, are devastating and heartbreaking. The death of a child, an accident that left one with catastrophic physical and mental limitations, the inability to heal a relationship, the loss of a soulmate may be the step too far. When those tragedies in our life happen, we scream out to God, asking how He could let this happen. If He loves us and we have prayed with our whole hearts, how could He abandon us? That must have been how Abraham and Sarah felt.
There is nothing wrong with shouting out in our despair and misery. I believe Abraham went every step of the way up that mountain with tears flowing down his face. I imagine Sarah at home broken and bewildered by God she loved, who had blessed her with Isaac and now was taking him from her.
What step is a step too far? I want to believe I would be like Abraham, and nothing would be too much. With my heart broken and tears flowing down my face, I want to think that I would do what God asks of me with faith in His love.
As we all look back at our lives, we need to breathe deeply. When we see the trials and the losses we realize we have already stepped over the line many times. We have trusted God, and we walked in His way even when we didn’t understand it. Even if we were devastated and fearful, we continued down the road before us with faith. Perhaps a belief that is battered and beaten but a faith that is ever precious in God’s eyes.
As I have prayed with this passage, I realized that Abraham didn’t walk alone with his son Isaac up the mountain. God was there, enabling him to take the next step. God was there with Sarah bereft, holding her tight and whispering words that allowed her to keep breathing when the devastation threatened to take her last breath.
Most importantly, I realized God is here with me. God is here with each of us when life pushes us what seems a step too far. God is holding us up and helping us to take the next step, the next breath. When those times come in our lives, they will come for all of us. We will have two choices. We can turn into God and double down in faith, or we can, in our pain, turn away and blame God.
Faith doesn’t remove the terrible situations we face in life. Faith gives us the loving embrace of God to help us through to the other side and to whatever grace and blessing God has in store for us. When we are being asked by what happens in our life to go what seems a step too far, that is when our faith is most important and most valuable. Faith is easy when life is good and all is well. Faith is all we have when the next step seems impossible.
In God’s Unending Love,
Gwen
