Not Letting Go

Today I read some Dakota tribal wisdom: "When you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."  Food for thought.  But letting go is never easy.


I've been thinking a lot lately about letting go.  Like Abraham climbing Mount Moriah.  I can't figure out what was going on in his head, more so in his heart.  The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.  He had been taught to bless the name of God in adversity, like his ancestor Job.

But sacrificing your own son sounds to me like infanticide.  What kind of God would really ask you to do that?  What kind of father would make such preparations - even taking firewood with him, up there above the tree line?  The answers can be glib - God was testing him, the God who sends angels as messengers, like the one who appeared to Abraham on that mountain top and told him not to do it.  (This angel should be the patron saint of child rights activists.)


So if God placed a ram in a thicket for Abraham, why didn't he listen to the prayers of Jesus in Gethsemane?  Prayers so deep that they caused him to sweat blood?  His only Son.  Why couldn't He do on Mount Calvary what he did on Mount Moriah?  Even He had to let go...

Back to Moriah.... a three-day climb.  Abraham only said to the sherpas he took along, when they reached the summit, to wait while he and Isaac went off "to worship".  Child sacrifice was practised by other religions at the time, but is condemned not less than ten times in the Bible (Leviticus 18:21; 20:2-5; Deuteronomy 18:10; 2 Kings 17:17; 21:6; 2 Chronicles 28:3; 23:10; Psalm 106:37-38; Jeremiah 19:4-5; 32:35).  Of course all of these came after the era of Abraham, but still...


We have all had our fill at times of our teenagers, but this was over the top.  He even tied the boy up and placed him on the firewood on the altar built, before the angel appeared.  Eish!  The poor kid must have had nightmares about this in his later life.  Worship?  "WE" will worship?  That was the royal "we" because judging by Isaac's questions, he was not privy to it.


Letting go is hard.  Especially when you had a long wait to get the project started.  More especially when the very start of it was a miracle.  What kind of God asks you to give up a miraculous gift that He gave you?


Can you do it?  Even if it doesn't make any sense?  Is there a disconnect between worship and ethics?  In South Africa, we know that devout Christians practiced apartheid.  But they were not revered for this like Abraham.  South Africa became a pariah among the nations.



How did missionary doctors feel when the hospitals that they built up were swallowed up by government health systems?



How did Candy Lightner - the founder of MADD - feel when she lost her daughter to a drunk driver?



Does God still test us?  Or are there some questions without answers?



Please pray for me as I grapple with whether to let go.  Is that what God wants me to do?  Is that what he wants C4L to do?  Pray for an angel who can tell me not to let go, who has the power to reverse what God ordained.