Advent 2021 – The Jesse Tree: How to Trust God in Loss
This is a series of reflections on daily readings designed for families during the season of Advent.
There is nothing that can prepare you for the death of a dream, the loss of a parent, or the dissolution of a marriage. The day after my dream came crashing down, I sat on the couch in disbelief while waves of rage and grief washed through me in tears and cries.
What do you do in the face of profound loss? How do you relate to God, when the one thing you most wanted to protect, hold onto, or keep safe, is in danger? These are not academic questions. If God can’t be trusted to protect and keep safe the things that matter most to us, is God worth trusting at all?
Day Six – Trust: Genesis 22:1-19
After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”
This is one of the most troubling passages in all of scripture. It’s hard enough to imagine offering up one’s own child as a burnt offering, but when we consider Isaac and Abraham the story only gets more complicated. Isaac is the child Abraham waited more than twenty years to conceive. Isaac is the child God promised to Abraham, through whom Abraham expected to have grandchildren. Everything Abraham understands about his future, his covenant with God, his posterity, and God’s blessing rests on Isaac. How in the world can God ask Abraham to sacrifice him?
Dig a little deeper into the story of Abraham and you’ll discover this hero of faith isn’t exactly faithful. Twice, Abraham offered his wife Sarah to other powerful men when he feared his life might be at stake. Abraham fathered a son with Sarah’s slave Hagar, but then sent both the boy and his mother away, exposing both of them to the possibility of death in the desert.
Abraham is complicated. He’s a friend of God. He’s a coward. He’s a righteous man. He’s a scoundrel. Like most us Abraham is a monstrous saint, or else a saintly monster.
I wonder if this ordeal, an ordeal in which God provides a ram in place of Isaac, is an opportunity for Abraham to come face to face with the loss of his dream, his future, his love, and to confront that essential question, “Can God be trusted?” This story presses us to confront the same question. Can God be trusted in the face of real or potential loss? Abraham seems to say yes, calling the place “God will provide.”
How have you struggled to trust God to provide?
What loss or grief causes you to doubt God’s provision?
How might this story (strange as it is) offer hope?