"Maker of this mountain, please...
make another way." ~Andrew Peterson ,"Holy is the Lord"
Last year on the second Tuesday of November, our then three-year-old son Asher had a nightmare. The following three weeks in the Curtis home were nothing short of terrible.
For one, Asher refused to go in his room by himself at all. Even in the middle of the day. And nighttime was a complete disaster. After a long struggle to get him to sleep, Asher would wake up in the middle of the night and decide to go turn on all of the lights in the living room and sit on the couch as if it were morning. Eventually, one of us would wake up and try to put him back to bed, only to have him return over and over, preventing any of us from getting a good night’s sleep. I spent a couple of nights sleeping in the floor of his room, and several nights on the couch in the living room. And most of you know that a three-year-old is hard enough to parent. A three-year-old who hasn’t had nearly enough sleep + parents who haven’t had enough sleep either = one miserable house. Overcoming this fear of his room and of sleeping was a long and difficult process. A good bit of the complication came from the fact that I was trying, and failing, to explain abstract concepts to a child who was not able to understand abstraction. I tried to explain that his nightmare wasn’t real and that it was his imagination. To him, the nightmare was a thing that had visited his room. He questioned me as to why the nightmare came and where the nightmare went and if the nightmare would come back. He talked more and more of witches and ghosts, and no amount of my insisting could convince him that those things were not real. In the end, I realized that I would never be able to get his brain to understand what I was trying to say. So, I did what any parent might do in order to get a decent night’s sleep. I started sort of lying to him. Since I couldn’t convince him that witches and ghosts and nightmares weren’t real, I told him that bad things were all in jail. I told him that the police get all of the bad things and put them in jail, and there is no key and they can’t get out, and the police stay at the jail all of the time to make sure that the bad things can’t get out, and that the jail is far, far away from our house. We even called a friend who is a police man to help corroborate my story. Eventually I said it with enough repetition and conviction that he believed me. He slept easier – and so did I. After Anne asked me to speak for this series, I was thinking about Asher’s faith in things Godly and ghostly – and how he believes, well, whatever I (and other grown-ups in his life) tell him. It reminded me of this song by Andrew Peterson called "Holy Is the Lord." It opens with Abraham waking his little boy, telling him to kiss his mom, and asking Isaac to hold his hand as they journey together. The picture he paints here is sweet and serene. Isaac goes right along with his dad –and why wouldn’t he? The problem comes, of course, because we all know the whole story. Scripture tells us that GOD speaks to Abraham, tells him to take his son, HIS ONLY SON, and go sacrifice him on a mountain that GOD will show him. Now if you’ve been reading Genesis and you get to this point, you realize that Abraham is faced with what seems like an unsolvable problem here. God makes a covenant with Abraham back in Genesis 17, promising that his 90-year-old wife will have a son, name him Isaac, and that “God will establish a covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.” SO, for God now to ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac creates a problem that we cannot logically resolve. This Genesis story is troubling to say the least. It raises questions about the nature of God, the sanity of Abraham, and about the naivety of Isaac. Commentators struggle with this story, and rightfully so. I read one who suggested that we should stop preaching this story, since it promotes child abuse. Some say this is story is one that is simply meant to condemn the practice of child sacrifice. Yet others encourage us to ignore what is actually happening (a parent who is commanded by God to kill a child) and look at this as simply a metaphorical story about how God tests and provides. Well, let me just say that I’m not going to resolve this struggle today. It’s just beyond my comprehension – like explaining imagination to a three-year-old. So, to get back to the story, Abraham is given a totally nonsensical task for any parent, but especially for him, in relation to the promise that God had earlier made. Still he wakes up his son, chops some wood, and heads off. Three days in, Isaac starts asking some questions, “Hey dad, where’s the lamb for the offering?” and Abraham answers in true dad fashion: “God will provide,” or in other words, “just trust me.” Next, the scripture cuts to a scene where Abraham ties his son down and gets out his knife. The Angel of the Lord stops him, since he has seemingly passed the test. Abraham looks around and finds a ram caught in some brush, and they sacrifice the ram instead. Crisis averted. I wonder, though, what the walk back down the mountain was like. As I said before, it is the sweet, trusting Isaac that catches my attention at first. Here is a boy – who most commentators believe is somewhere around 10 years old – out for an errand with his father. When Abraham tells Isaac where they are going, Isaac does exactly what every kid would do with a parent. “Where are we going again? Is this the right way? Well what are we going to do? Well how are we going to do a sacrifice without a ram?” And Abraham’s answer reminds me so much of my answer to my kids when they begin in a similar line of questioning. “We’re going on a trip. Yes - this is the right way. Can you just trust me that I know what I am doing?” When I look at this story as a parallel to my life, with me as the parent like Abraham, what I realize is that grown-ups sure do have a big responsibility when it comes to children. They believe what we tell them. Bad things are in jail. Santa is watching. Jesus Loves You. They will follow us up a mountain to their own death – because we are the parent, and we sure do tell them all the time to just trust us that we know what we are doing. But when I remember that so much of scripture tells me to be like a child, I look again at this story – this time with Abraham as the child and God as the parent. When we switch the roles, we find that Abraham acts pretty much the same way as Isaac. God says to Abraham, “Come on, bring your son, and let’s go.” Abraham gets up and goes with God like Isaac went with him. So at this point, I like to let what Otis Moss III calls my “sanctified Imagination” interject. I imagine Abraham begin to ask questions like Isaac did, “Um okay God, I’ll bring Isaac to sacrifice, but earlier you said…” and God says, “Remember when you thought Sarah couldn’t get pregnant? That worked out. And, yes- this is the right way. Can you just trust me that I know what I am doing?” I imagine Abraham as he walks on, his brain scrambling to try and understand this thing that he is sure he is being told to do, even though the whole thing is too terrible and complicated and illogical for his mind to comprehend. I sit with composer Andrew Peterson and watch the scene, and I imagine Abraham sending up a plea, “Maker of this mountain, please make another way.” And beyond logic and our understanding, God does make another way. Abraham looks up, looks around, and finds another answer. You cannot read this story in the Christian tradition without thinking of a time later when Jesus looks up at his maker and asks just about the same question – “if it is possible, please let this cup pass from me,” or in other words, “Maker of this mountain, please make another way.” And for Jesus, God provides not a ram in the thorns, but resurrection. So then, I found even greater meaning in this story beyond what it means to be a parent trying to bumble through and somehow calm a terrified child. I learned more about what it means to be a child of God. It means understanding that there are concepts in this world that are just too complicated for my little mind to grasp (like the Abraham and Isaac story). It means knowing that God is doing God’s best to try and reach me despite my limited understanding. The command from God to Abraham seems illogical, unthinkable, and beyond comprehension, yet Abraham follows, asks, and looks. And somehow, once again God makes another way. As much as Abraham’s actions make me cringe as a mother, the trust that he shows to his maker is a trust that I need to imitate. Being a Child of God like Abraham means that I need to ask a lot of questions, listen to the answers, pay attention to the world around me, and to try and understand more each day what this parent of mine is trying to teach me. So, what I say to Asher is that the bad things are in jail. And Asher trusts me, so he sleeps better at night. He knows that I love him and I would never try to hurt him. And Isaac knows the same thing about his dad Abraham. And Abraham knows the same thing about his maker. The problems that I see around me are often as unsolvable and incomprehensible as the one Abraham faced. How do we make sense of the natural disasters facing our world? How do we sleep at night when so many of our brothers and sisters are suffering? How do we get out of bed when someone we love is no longer here? How do we leave our homes knowing gunmen are lurking near our churches, schools, concerts, cafes, malls, movie theaters, and sidewalks? I don’t even know where to start. But God wakes me up, just as he did to Abraham, and Abraham did to Isaac, and God holds my hand as we walk. I ask questions about what is going on, listen for God’s voice, and I look around for surprising answers. Above all, I trust that my maker loves me – and that the same God that made the mountains and saved Isaac can and will make another way for us.
I gave this message during Chapel at Maryville College on October 3. You can find a video of that service on Facebook here or watch below.
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Diana CurtisWife, mom, stepmom, writing instructor, handbell ringer, choir singer, calligrapher, and expert napper. Archives
December 2017
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