What is Your Isaac?

“God 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 will show you.’” ~ Genesis 22:2

The daily readings were difficult ones today. Most of us do not understand the test God lays before Abraham. Why would a loving God request that a father sacrifice his only son after promising that his descendents would number more than the sand on the shore or the stars in the sky? The kind of God who would sacrifice an only Son would make such a request.

Those of us who claim to put God first in our lives oftentimes have a whole host of things on a list that puts God second, third, twentieth—a loved one, a career, stability, health, pride, stubbornness, loneliness, addictions, fears all win out over God most days. We know that God will forgive us and keep us in a grasp from which we cannot wiggle out and so we are not put to the test most days.

The second reading says that nothing will keep us from the love of the Christ: no hardship, no distress, no famine. Christ will still love us but will we still love Christ when these perils come? In the Gospel of the Transfiguration, we see that the disciples want to make God first in their lives having seen what happened to Jesus. They will build tents and live on the mountaintop forever at that moment.

Most of us cannot sustain the mountaintop moment. I have many Isaacs in my life—more than I am willing to admit. I realize this when I figure out how unbalanced my life has become. When I cannot find time to pray, when I lose the desire to go to mass, when I am too tired to think straight, I have gone too far and too long without God. I need to dump my pride, my ambition, my desires, and my needs on an altar and pull out the knife.

I know that in that moment God will intervene because God knows that my desire is to serve God even if I am off track or overwhelmed and tempted by the world. I used to spend much more time on mountaintops. I got very comfortable in my pews for several years with a pastor who kept me fed more than I acknowledged. There was no need to go elsewhere. I am hoping that while I am on vacation that I may find my centre again and return home at peace.

In the Spiritual Exercises, we pray this prayer and the grace to live it out:

Take, Lord, and Receive

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory,
my understanding, and my entire will.
All I have and call my own.
Whatever I have or hold, you have given me.
I return it all to you and surrender it wholly
to be governed by your will.
Give me only your love and your grace
and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more.


What about you, who or what is your Isaac and how does it set you off the right path?

Peace,

Suzanne