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.