Dear Diary

The following is an excerpt from the journal of Isaac, son of Abraham:

My life will never be the same.

I've just returned from a trip with my father. It was one Isaac that helped to ready the servants and the donkey and help with the cutting of the wood before we set out; it is a different Isaac that has returned home.

I knew the trip was odd. It was very sudden and my father had given no hint of it in the days prior. On the other hand, it didn't seem impulsive on his part. The servants were mystified and whispered among themselves as they made preparations. My father took no notice; he was distracted and seemed consumed with troublesome thoughts of his own.

We left early in the morning and, despite the unusual circumstances, I was not concerned until I saw my mother run from her tent and approach my father with large, questioning eyes. Whatever he said to her, she was not satisfied, and the uncertainty in her face as we walked away left me feeling strangely unsettled.

The journey was uneventful enough for the first two days. There was little conversation; my father was pensive and quiet and the servants followed his lead. But on the third day, my father seemed to spy something in the distance that was familiar to him and he commanded the servants to wait for us there with the donkey while he and I went on ahead. He said that we would return to them after we worshiped. It was a strange parting. The servants seemed perplexed, as was I, and my father was unusually tender with them as he gave his instructions. An expression of agony momentarily passed over his face as he lifted the bundle of wood to my back. For the first time, I started to feel like maybe the trip was not my father's idea.

I had many questions I'd planned to ask my father once we were out of earshot of the servants, but as we walked alone, the silence was more forbidding than I'd anticipated. The nearer we came to the mountain looming ahead of us, the more agitated my father's face became, and I started to become nervous.

I was finally able to summon sufficient courage to find my voice. I called out to my father and he responded. I asked him where was the lamb for the burnt offering? I first thought he had not heard me because he took so long to reply. But as I stood, he turned to face me with such an anguished and deliberate slowness that it frightened me. A full range of inexplicable emotions seemed to pass over his face until his eyes at last locked straight on mine. In that instant, I realized that he was not exercising his own will, but was instead submitting himself to the will of another. His eyes were full of tears and love as he answered in the gentlest of voices, "God Himself will provide the lamb for the offering," and his eyes shone fiercely as he finished the sentence with, "my son."

We reached the designated place--a place known only to my father--and he began to build an altar. At first, I watched. I watched as he became winded and tired from his labor. His body is old. He is old enough to be my great-grandfather. I know well the story of my unusual birth in my parents' old age, after decades of my mother's closed womb. I have heard it told and re-told with much joy and laughter and praise given to the One True God, whom my father serves. I felt certain that whatever was happening right then--whatever momentous occasion had brought my father and myself three days walk from home--had to do with this One True God. I love my father and my father loves Him. I began to help him build the altar.

When he started to bind my wrists, it was as if I were in a dream. The whole scene appeared to me hazy and unreal. My father's trembling hands worked the rope with dogged obedience, while his eyes--the only substantial reality to me in that moment--flooded with a staggering love. Neither of us spoke.

I knew that if I chose to resist, I could overpower him, but I did not want to. The minutes that it took for him to bind me and lay my impotent body on the altar built by our own hands--it could have been ten minutes or an hour--are the tenderest minutes I have ever spent with my father. In the surreal cloud of events, his overwhelming love was the only thing I knew to be true.

I lay on my back and stared at the blinding white-blue of the sky. My journey was over. My mother's face flashed in my brain. The sound of metal. My father's labored breathing. The tamarisk tree in Beersheba. The huddle of tents at home. The waiting servants. My father's face when he lay the wood on my back. A bleating in the bushes. Everything fell away. I could not feel the stones beneath my back or the coarse fibers of the rope. I was soaring straight into the white-blue brightness. The sun was warm and I was free. I breathed the aroma of the Eternal God. He had asked for me. I was here because He had asked for me and now I was asking for Him. White-blue brightness was the color of His eyes. He had asked for me. I was answering Him. I am here, I am here, I am here, I am Yours, I will always be Yours.

My father's silhouette stood in black contrast to the white-blue of His eyes. His dark, faceless shadow raised itself to its full height and the knife was outlined above his head. I am here, I am Yours, I will always be Yours.

Then came the voice. The voice that came from everywhere at once. The voice that spoke no language yet could not be misunderstood. The original voice from which all other voices have come. The voice that is home.

The voice with no language spoke my father's name. The voice with no language said to let me go. The voice with no language said that now He knew.

There was a silence and then a rush of cutting rope and mingled tears and passionate embrace. I sat on the altar, supporting my father's sobbing, exhausted frame in my arms. He kissed my forehead, my cheeks, my hair.

Then we both saw the ram at the same time. The bleating in the bushes. His horns were caught in the tangle of the thicket and he could not get free. We sacrificed the ram provided by the One True God--our God, the God who had asked for me. We sacrificed and we worshiped. I have seen my father worship this God many times in my life, but for the first time, I worshiped with him. This Eternal God with the voice that is home is my God. This Eternal God who asked for me and to Whom I answered, "I am Yours".

My life will never be the same.

Appendicitis, and other thoughts about the Body

I'm in a time in my adventure with Jesus when He is revealing to me great and unsearchable things I did not know about His Body. So many scriptures I've read and sermons I've heard have pointed to the unparalleled unity that is characteristic of His church--the intensity of relationship found there that is representative of who He is and what He is like. The American blur in my vision has been ever so slightly corrected to allow me a somewhat clearer picture of His intention for His Bride.

This is new for me. The passages in the New Testament which refer to the church as a body are probably too familiar; they had lost their effect on me. The last time I remember seriously considering the metaphor (if it is one) was about 8 years ago. I felt then that God told me I was like an appendix in the Body of Christ. An authentic part of the Body, but a part that could easily be done without and wouldn't be missed much by the other members. A true believer that showed up for church--but nothing else. I did not want that to be my legacy. I started to show up and help out and feel my way towards something more meaningful.

It's a strange balance, however. . . .this awareness of being created with a specific purpose in a particular place in space and time and a role in the Body of Christ that is significant and unique, weighed against the knowledge that my participation does not make His church any more or less complete. While I may endeavor to make my role more valuable than that of an appendix, He has no shortage of organs for transplant if necessary. God doesn't seem to find Himself in a bind.

But that misses the point. The point is that in the process of growing and stretching from an appendix into some other more useful organ--somewhere in the monotony of days and tasks that exist in that space of time--there comes a sense of gratitude for the opportunity. A keener appreciation for the fact that, by virtue of ourselves, we have no business at all being involved in this Kingdom of Heaven, but yet, with tears and laughter, can say how grateful we are for the blessed assurance of knowing that we are in on it.

And now I'm in a place where the truths I am learning about the Body--His Body--have less to do with me and my role and more to do with my investment in the roles of others. My painstaking, keep-me-up-at-night, laborious, joyous investment.

And I have an unaccounted for excitement at being part of this thing called the church: a vital, complicated organism full of pieces that are united and not the same. I am drawn in by the mystery of the fact that I am not His Bride, but we are His Bride and I cannot extricate myself from you, nor do I want to, although I cannot conceive how it is that we have been knit so impossibly together.

He is showing me great and unsearchable things that I did not know, but they are not just for me. My walk is yours and yours is mine and in Him all things hold together.

That Night's Gonna Be a Good Night. . . .

The kids and I were just dancing madly around the house to the Black Eyed Peas "I Gotta Feeling", faces red and sweaty, with the dog speeding around us in circles. The energy and the sense of anticipation in the song is palpable. As we bounced around the living room with hands raised toward heaven, I could see us. . . .I could see the whole mass of believers, the waiting Bride of Christ, dancing in anticipation of the coming Prince on the white beaches of the crystal sea, singing out "Tonight's gonna be a good night!" I could feel the exuberant joy and the headiness of knowing that everything you've ever wanted or waited for in your entire existence is about to take place. The uncontrollable tears and chills and laughter of the knowing that His presence was so imminent. Of the certainty that we were about to be flat on our faces and caught up in His arms and dancing before Him and with Him. Swallowed up by the mystery of oneness with an endless throng of people whose faces were unfamiliar to me but whose spirits I recognized immediately. I worshiped. I was home. No words.

I wonder if God hears a song like that and perhaps grins to Himself and whispers aside to an angel, "They caught it there, you know. They caught a brush of a glimpse of what they're in for. I love when that happens."