A Poem for Lent...
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LOVE AND THE AKEDAH
The Binding
of Isaac – Genesis 22
Take your
son
your only
son
whom you love…
Twenty-two
chapters into Scripture
and it's the
first time love is mentioned
as God tells
Abraham
Sacrifice
Isaac
as a burnt
offering
What swirls
through the
mind
of this old
patriarch
(who after a
hundred years
fathers the
son
of God's
promise…
the son he
loves
and proudly
watches grow)
What swirls
as he swings
the sharp
axe, splitting wood
It was three
days journey
from
Beersheba to Moriah—
Leaving his
servants behind
Abraham hands
Isaac
the bundled
wood
and carries
fire and knife
up the mount
himself
Avi, (my father)
where is
the lamb?
God will
provide the lamb
my son
Abraham
erects an altar of stone
arranges the
wood and binds the lad
(whose faith
and obedience
must be at
least as great as his own)
Unflinching
before the God
he has
finally come to trust
the aged
patriarch
(known to lie
to save his
own skin
known to try
to pull off
God's
covenant himself
when it
seemed God was slow
in keeping
His promise)
this same
patriarch…
raises the
glinting blade
above his
son, his only son
whom he
loves…
Split-second
to knife-fall
the angel of
the Lord calls out
Abraham!
Abraham!
Do not lay
a hand on the boy…
The old man
who has
proven he would
withhold nothing
from his God—
drops the
bloodless blade
unbinds and
embraces Isaac
and there,
tangled
in a thicket,
struggles
the
substitute sacrifice
…a
ram
Two millennia
later
God's Son
His only Son
Whom He loves
carries wood
of a
crossbeam
up the very
same mountain
No angel of
the Lord
arrives last
moment
to halt the
hammerfall
No ram
appears
in a thicket
For God so
loves
the world
He provides…
His
Son
His
only Son…The Sacrificial Lamb
Maude Carolan
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