Knife

5th night of Advent—Isaac and the lamb.

Symbol: Lamb

Hymns: Worthy Is The Lamb; My Faith Looks Up To Thee

We discover that we don't know these hymns, at least not the tune of the first, and we're really rough and unfamiliar sounding on the second.

Kind of like some days of living family life together. The ones where the notes are missed or jumbled together in a cacophonous pile with awkwardnesses of trying to make the music, to make the euphony, to swing the tune melodic, but all fails with a facepalm and a head shaking sigh of tiredness.

So we enter the fifth night observance of Advent, and it's about only son Isaac, a lamb, and a knife. And our own son Isaac is the honor-bearer this night. Poignant because I'm pretty sure my faith would have failed had I been in Abraham's place.

Of course we've heard about the faith of Isaac drafting off the faith of his father when he asks where the lamb for the sacrifice is. He trusts when his father answers, "God will provide for himself the lamb." He trusts as they walk on. He trusts as they build the altar. He trusts as his father binds him. He trusts as his father lays him on the wood. He trusts as the flames of the torch burn nearby, the flames that will burn the wood and the offering on the altar of sacrifice. He trusts his father's words as he catches the gleam of the knife in the practiced hand of his father.

But it is the faith of the father by which we are undone. The father, whose name was changed to "Father of Many", when asked to offer up his son, his only son, whom he loved, the son of promise, says, "I will." The father who, when asked about the lamb, responds with an unhesitating confidence, though he has been given no assurances. The father clings to the promises: "You will be the father of many nations; your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac." Through tears, as with Laughter he builds the alter, the father clings. He clings as he binds Laughter and lays him on the wood. He clings so tightly that the words of promise, the conversation of creator and loved creation, are now—not past, not remembered history, not recalled memory— but achingly present moment.

So even as the knife begins its swift and practiced movement, no hesitation, loving eyes locked on trusting eyes, in the abruptness of God's call of his name, he answers as from the on-going dialogue. "I'm here." And Abraham looks up.

Just so, curved Mary looks up as the Light of the World wends one day closer. She, too, trusts as God provides for Himself the Lamb.