trust and sacrifice

I've been asked by the universe to kill my Isaac!

Now... before you go calling Interpol ;) Let me s'plain!

Okay... religious education lesson first!

In the bible the story of Abraham and Isaac tells how God asked Abraham to go to a distant mountain and sacrifice his one and only child, Isaac.

Now Abraham was an old, old man. He had been promised the world - quite literally - by God, that his decendants would be as numerous as the grains of sand on a beach. He and his wife Sarah - who was biologically beyond child-bearing age - eventually did give birth! Quite the miracle huh?

So you can imagine that Abraham was pretty much dotty about his wee boy. Loved him like nothing else in the world mattered. Here in this child lay the potential of that extraordinary future he'd been promised.

And now?

Here was the same God telling - demanding - that he kill his beloved son in an act of worship. To sacrifice his one and only son just as all the other religions in the region occasionally required as a part of their worship rituals.

And Abraham did as he was told. He trusted God implicitly to do the right thing by him no matter the circumstances or the immediate consequences. He knew that matching God's wisdom is much like an ant trying to understand human wisdom! Unfathomable and mysterious in the extreme (from the ants perspective that is ;)).

In the story - Abraham was about to slaughter Isaac (can anyone imagine that kind of heartbreak?)... when God intervened to save the child and provide another alternative for the sacrificial rite of worship instead. Who knows what might have happened though if Abraham did not trust God so well! The whole of history would have been quite different I think.

Okay! So what does this have to do with little old me in the 21st Century?

I don't have a child by the name of Isaac and nor would I dare consider actually killing anyone, let alone one of my children! I would not believe in a god that asked me to do such a thing (which makes Abraham all the more remarkable to me really).

The "Isaac" I do refer to though is my deepest held desire/fantasy/thing/person/wish/assumption that I cling to with all my heart, soul and mind.

My "Isaac" is the one thing - the one deepest held belief and desire I have - that I will not give up.... and yet...I'm being asked by God (and the cosmos if you will) to do just that.

It is not an easy thing.

And so now, I am to travel in my heart to that secret "mountain" to commune directly with my God, sacrifice my particular "Isaac" and TRUST Him to know what He has planned in all this.

He will either make me follow through and actually kill this beloved thing off inside me OR he will intervene at the last minute and provide an alternative out. There are a million other possibilities besides I cannot even begin to imagine!

I have always trusted in my God. I have always believed that He has my best interests at heart. But this is a tough call! He's asking me to do something so extraordinarily hard - I don't know if I want to go there.

Can I trust Him enough to know that everything will work out fine even if I have to kill off any hope of attaining that one thing I wanted so much?