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Take your son…your only son…

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If we take time during the season of Lent to quiet the heart and meditate on Scripture, asking God to speak to us…He does…in ways we can understand.

He threads together the truths of Scripture and if we take the time to ponder, we can pull from our own limited understanding and begin to glimpse a little more the depth of His love.

For instance, I have spent several days mulling over the following passages of Scripture involving children.

One is from the Genesis 44 account of the sons of Jacob standing before Pharaoh’s right hand man (unknown to them, he is their brother Joseph, who they assumed met demise as a result of their own cruel hands).

He is demanding the imprisonment of their little brother Benjamin on trumped up charges. Judah pleads for the freedom of the boy, offering himself in his place. He explains to Joseph how this child is very special to their father as he has already lost one son. Judah uses this phrase, explaining the heartache it would cause their aged father, Jacob: “…since his life is bound up in the lad’s life.”

I think any parent can understand that phrase.

Surely, our lives are literally bound up in the lives of our children.

Then I think of the Scripture that recounts God’s call to a father who has just one son left at home; one long-awaited, precious  child of promise. And God asks the unthinkable.

Genesis 22: 2…”Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

I cringe and I gasp. Abraham had two sons, but God makes clear it is his only son Isaac – the son of the promise – the son of he and his wife, Sarah.

So much in that is so tender…your son…your only son…whom you love…and offer him…as a burnt offering….

And I think how the life of the father is bound up in the life of the child.

We gave birth to three.

And each one…is an only one….

there is only one Rachel, one Sarah, one John.

They have added to our numbers…one Zach, one Daniel, one Graham, one Emmett…

and our lives, Russ and mine, are bound up in the lives of these children.

And then I think….

For God so loved the world

that He gave

His only begotten Son….

That all who believe in Him…that Son…that only Son…

should not perish…

but have….

everlasting….

life

And surely, the life of the Father is bound up in the life of the Son.

Everlasting life

For all

Who

Believe.

And now we, who believe, are His children.

The life of the Father, bound up in the lives of the Son and the children of the Promise <3

 

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