Isaac.

I've been reading "The Pursuit of God" by A.W.Tozer, actually I'm only about five pages in...but finding it a well-worthy read. In the first chapter Tozer wrote about Isaac, and God's request to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. From here, please let me get carried away with my excitement. Abraham loved Isaac. He protected Isaac, Isaac was his family, object of his deepest love. I love my siblings like this, I mean...I love them. I would protect them to my greatest ability, because they are precious to me, they are my family. This love, it's beautiful, right? But Abraham's love for Isaac was incomplete. He couldn't love Isaac enough, there was a missing piece. This is where God comes in and asks Abraham to do the very thing that wrenches his soul - kill Isaac, for Him. Man, I don't know how he did it. Maybe Abraham doesn't even know how he did it...it wasn't without tears, anguish, most likely - anger...and pain. But, in the end, he did it. He pulled the knife back, and he trusted God's heart without understanding Him at all. God didn't allow Isaac to die, He intervened - because that wasn't the point of it all. In that moment, something else happened. More than God physically intervening, God's love intervened. Into the places Abraham's love could never fit...God's love made the love complete. It's the things we give up that are truly ours. If we never give them up (this applies to just about everything we hold onto dearly)...they can never be everything they could be. They can never be complete.

For so long I've held onto something I thought I wouldn't be true to myself if I let go of it. I have always wanted to be the girl who believed in love even when everyone else didn't, the girl who hoped when everyone else lost hope...and letting go of dear things, felt like giving up, being untrue to myself...it felt apathetic. But, you know what? I'm realizing that this is a love that has a different kind of beauty. It's a fierce love. It's a love that does win in the end because it does more than my love ever could.

I think right now, if I'm honest, I'm only half-way up the mountain to the altar. I cry when I look at the "knife", I cry when I think about the sacrifice...but I know in my heart-of-hearts...that I am crying over something that's not as much mine as it's felt. And that my perception of love is about to be blown out of the water the moment I reach that altar.