The Mountain Where God Provided

Do you know what it is to love someone so much that the thought of losing them makes your chest ache? That you would give anything, anything, to keep them safe?

Abraham knew that ache. He had a son named Isaac. A boy he had waited for, longed for, prayed for through all his long old years. And when Isaac finally came, Abraham loved him more than his own heartbeat.

Then one day God spoke. And what God asked was the hardest thing in all the world. "Take your son," God said. "Your only son. The one you love. Go up the mountain."

Abraham did not understand. But he had learned, over a long lifetime, that God keeps his word. This was the God who had called him out of the old country, who had shown him the stars, who had heard a boy crying in the desert and opened a well. So in the gray light of morning he saddled his donkey, and he took Isaac, and they walked together toward the mountain. Three long days they walked.

Up the slope they climbed, the two of them, side by side. Isaac carried the wood on his own small back. And as they went, he looked up.

"Father," he said, "we have the fire, and we have the wood. But where is the lamb?"

The question must have caught in Abraham's throat like a stone. He answered with the only hope he had. "God himself will provide the lamb, my son."

They came to the place. Abraham built the altar, stone upon stone, his hands shaking. And just when there was nothing left to do, just at the very edge of the worst thing, a voice broke through the air like sunrise.

"Abraham! Abraham! Do not lay a hand on the boy."

And Abraham looked up. There, caught in the bushes by his horns, was a ram. A ram, standing where his son had stood. The ram would die, and Isaac, the beloved son, would walk back down the mountain alive. God had provided a life to take the place of a life.

Abraham named that place "The Lord Will Provide." And for years and years after, people kept saying it: "On the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided." They said it like a promise still waiting to come true.

Because there would be another hill, not so very far from this one. And another Father, who loved his only Son more than his own heart. And his Son would climb that hill carrying wood upon his back, just like Isaac.

But this time, when the Son went up, no voice would call out to stop it. No ram would be caught in the thorns. This time the beloved Son would BE the Lamb. He would not be spared.

Because he chose you. He looked down all those years, all the way to you, and decided you were worth the mountain.

So father and son came down the mountain together, Isaac's hand in Abraham's, alive under the wide open sky. Isaac would grow tall and strong, and one day, on another road, a bride would come riding to meet him. But that is the next story.