The Mirror of God's Word

He's still working on me
To make me what I oughta be
Took Him just a week to make the moon and stars
The sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars
How loving and patient He must be
'Cause He's still working on me!

Some of you (a very small few of you) are now humming a happy little tune you haven't heard in years.  You're welcome.

There's a verse that goes with that song that says,

In the mirror of His Word
Reflection that I see
Makes me wonder why He never gave up on me ...

I've been thinking a lot about that mirror lately.  Our church has been working through the book of Genesis since early summer, and about the time we hit Genesis 12, I started getting really fidgety.  As week after week Steve extolled God's faithfulness, I began to see myself in Abraham's repeated failure to keep covenant.  It was as though he was holding up a mirror, forcing me to take a good, hard look at myself.

This week, we got to Genesis 22.  Abraham binds his only son, the child God promised him, the child he waited YEARS to have, on an altar and raises his knife to sacrifice him, an offering of incalculable worth. We read and heard and talked about Abraham's faith.  His unwavering obedience.  And, I didn't get it.  I felt frustrated all over again.  I could identify with the liar and the cheater and the laugher.  But, this guy that hears he's supposed to sacrifice his only son and gets up EARLY the next morning, chops some wood, and sets out on a three-day journey up a mountain?  Yeah, no.

I want to whine about it awhile.  I have whined about it awhile.  Why must following God be so stinking hard?  Why must He demand so stinking much?  Why is it never enough until He's got our everything?  Why does He let us taste the promise only to ask for it back?

Listening to the discussion during a community group meeting last night, it hit me.  Isaac wasn't the fulfillment of the promise.  He was a taste of the promise.  He was the tip of the iceberg.  We want to focus on Isaac because he looks like the fulfillment to us, the long awaited child.  But, the promise wasn't for a son, the promise was for a nation that would outnumber the stars, multitudes.

I stubbornly cling to an idol, to a promise, to what I think is the fulfillment (or maybe the betrayal) of a promise never realizing that it's only a taste of the immeasurably more than all I could ask or imagine God longs to reap through my life.


And because of Abraham’s faith, God counted him as righteous.And when God counted him as righteous, it wasn’t just for Abraham’s benefit. It was recordedfor our benefit, too, assuring us that God will also count us as righteous if we believe in him, the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. Romans 4:22-24