“The next morning, Abraham got up early…He took his son, Isaac…
Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac,
and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.”
Genesis 22:3, 9
I have always had one question about Abraham’s faith: “When God asked him to sacrifice his son, how was he able to obey so quickly?” I certainly would have needed several days or weeks to comply with such an astounding request.
In researching Abraham’s life, I discovered this was not his first altar. In fact, from the day he entered the promised land as a foreigner until the day he laid his son on the altar, Abraham left a trail of altars wherever he went. Each time Abraham built an altar, whether it was constructed from stacks of stone or from acts of surrender, he was building trust in the One he worshipped. There were altars in places where God gloriously appeared to him, but there were also altars in the tough places…like when Abraham fought armies to rescue his selfish nephew, when he interceded for a wicked city, or when he became the first circumcision surgeon. Stone upon stone, Abraham built altars of trust.
No wonder he acted with confidence when God asked him to build the most difficult altar of all. For over fifty years, Abraham had been gathering the stones!
So, even if my life looks like a pile of rubble, I can choose to use those stones, and build my own trail of altars!
