Provisions

by Ed Pennewell
Published January 26, 2006

The trail was winding upward from their camp by the mountains foot, and the day was wearing on yet the sun was still high in the heavens above them, as the father and son went to the place appointed to them. Early the day before, Word had come to the father to gather his child and go to the place on the mountain, and the father was troubled in his own heart at the message his God had given him.

His was not a young man, reaching well over his 100th year, but he was true to his God, faithful in all His ways for the blessings he had received through life. The goods given through time he knew as a blessing from his God, even the trials that had come his way, but now the trial was even greater on him. A true testing of his faith.

He spoke with his son in encouraging ways, lifting his Lord to him, revealing the great works of his God to the child. How he called him to leave the land of his family home to a new land, and as a stranger there, He yet blessed him in great ways. He told the child of his many travels and the struggles he had been through, always to be blessed of his God. Yet in his heart he was troubled at this last testing.

As the climbed the last hundred feet of the small trail, he petitioned within himself the desires of his heart. He had waited and prayed many years for the coming of his child, this child who was his true heir, his only child. The words of his Lord were spoken and he knew he could not turn back, knew he need not question the greatness of his God, but the fact was there all the same.

When they reached the top of the mountain, to the place the Lord had told him to go, many flattened stones lay there and he arranged them and made an altar for his offering. He had his son sit on the edge of the stones as he told him of the words of the Lord. How the Lord had commanded him to go into the mountains to give and offering and sacrifice. The child looked around and saw the bundle of wood his father had brought and the burning brand of wood.

"Look father there is the wood and the fire, but where is the lamb for the offering.?"

"The Lord shall provide His own offering this day," he told the child, and then told how he had been told by the Lord that he would be given a child in his old age, and now, past a hundred years he had his heir. "God saw to it that my prayer was answered, fear not son, the Lord has provided His offering."

Slowly they arranged the wood upon the flat stone, and then taking a cord he bound the hands of his only child and placed him on the wood. Taking the knife he had brought within his hand, he slowly raised it up, praying silently once more to his God.

And a voice called out from heaven saying, "Lay not your hand upon the lad, neither do any thing to him: for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son from me."

And Abraham lifted up his tear filled eyes, and looking behind him, found a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. He and his son then prayed together in praise of God, for HE had provided HIS lamb. They then gathered their things, and leaning upon the child Abraham headed back down the winding trail.

"Come Isaac, my son," he said, "Let us return home."

(Genesis 22:6-13)

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