Verse: And God said to Abraham, “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.” (Genesis 22:2)
Meditation: What seems cruel was in fact one of the most profound things that God could have done in the context of the history of redemption. The act that God was requesting of Abraham was the very act that God would carry out in his own life, the life of the Trinity. God gave his only Son, the Son he loved, as a sacrifice. The offering of Isaac was a picture of the reality that would take place on the cross with the death of Jesus.
Prayer: Father, when we look at our own children, even the children of this church, we are pierced at the thought of losing one of them to death’s clutches. (We pray you would forbid it!) But even these are merely glimpses at the infinite quality of love and pain you knew when you gave Jesus to die on the cross for us. Grant us that we would be shaped by that love, and that we would live out of that love. Grant the same to our children. Amen.