worshiping God alone
I have to admit that in all the years that I've heard the story of Abraham and Isaac told and retold, I never quite understood it. I mean I knew that it was a test, and I knew that through it Abraham was reckoned righteous. But I didn't understand why God needed to see Abraham raise his arm above his son. I thought, why couldn't he just look in his heart? But as David unwrapped this story tonight, I see the story as a wildly romantic throw-down. It wasn't that God couldn't see Abraham's heart, but that he needed to set it free.
This is a story of Yahweh God reprioritizing Abraham's heart...not by force, not by dictation, but by walking him through a process that would change his heart from within.
This is a difficult thing to want. It's difficult to say to God, "Here are the things I love. I'm afraid I love them more than I love you. Please rip them out of my life because I don't want to compromise my heart for YOU: my one thing." It's so difficult that we don't usually do it. I know I don't. In fact, I go the other way, praying for my desires and loves instead of just desiring to love God. I forget that some of my sweetest times with God are the times when I've had something precious to me ripped away. Or when it's not been ripped away, but I've let go of it in my heart.
Recently I had something go down the drain and I wrote, I know it sounds odd, but I feel like dancing. Dancing like in circles with no music and arms flailing free. Because I am God's and I've not much else right now to distract me from that fact, and that fact is entirely beautiful.
Not much else to distract me. Those words make sense of it all to me. God designed all this stuff (nature, community, purpose, love, intelligence, desire, etc) for us to enjoy and to mold us into the people that he put us here to become. But we are to worship God and God alone.
When God gave Moses the Law, he didn't do it because Israel was so off-track that they needed a checklist of things to do in order to pass the test. He gave Moses the Law because he longed to be in communion with Israel, and being a just God and all, needed a way to bridge that gap between sinful created beings and himself. So he gave them the Law, and they sacrificed animals and grain so that God could dwell among them. The sacrifices atoned for their sins so that he could be present with them.
So in essence, the law is not there to show us how disappointed with us God is, it's there to show us how in love with us God is.
God is so in love with us that he gives us a list of ways to live in holiness, to be closer to him, to bring his kingdom, to live the lives that he created us to live. God says, "No other gods, only me." [Exodus 20:3, The Message] To truly live happily, we listen to the one who created us, and he says clearly that worship is reserved for him, not his gifts.
Abraham learned that freedom. When he put Isaac on the altar he made a choice in his heart: he would worship not what God had given him, but God alone. He was set free. Not only did God set him free, but he then gave his gift right back to him by sending an angel that said, "Lay down the knife and do not hurt the boy."
God loves us too much to let us worship anything besides him. May we truly mean it when we pray these words, "Lord we cast down our idols. Give us clean hands, and give us pure hearts. Let us not give our souls to another. Oh God, let us be a generation that seeks your face."
