Saturday, March 9, 2019

The Binding of Isaac

Today’s Lenten Meditation

A-Poem-a-Day
Until Resurrection Day

Image credit: impactoevangelistico.net

LOVE AND THE AKEDAH

The Binding of Isaac – Genesis 22


Take your son

your only son
whom you love

Twenty-two chapters into Scripture
and it's the first time love is mentioned
as God tells Abraham

Sacrifice Isaac
as a burnt offering

What swirls
through the mind
of this old patriarch
(who after a hundred years
fathers the son
of God's promise…
the son he loves
and proudly watches grow)
What swirls as he swings
the sharp axe, splitting wood

It was three days journey
from Beersheba to Moriah—
Leaving his servants behind
Abraham hands Isaac
the bundled wood
and carries fire and knife
up the mount
himself

Avi, (my father)
where is the lamb?

God will provide the lamb
my son

Abraham erects an altar of stone
arranges the wood and binds the lad
(whose faith and obedience
must be at least as great as his own)

Unflinching before the God
he has finally come to trust
the aged patriarch
(known to lie
to save his own skin
known to try to pull off
God's covenant himself
when it seemed God was slow
in keeping His promise)
this same patriarch…
raises the glinting blade
above his son, his only son
whom he loves…

Split-second
to knife-fall
the angel of the Lord calls out

Abraham! Abraham!
Do not lay a hand on the boy…

The old man
who has proven he would
withhold nothing from his God—
drops the bloodless blade
unbinds and embraces Isaac

and there, tangled
in a thicket, struggles
the substitute sacrifice
…a ram

Two millennia later
God's Son
His only Son
Whom He loves
carries wood
of a crossbeam
up the very same mountain

No angel of the Lord
arrives last moment
to halt the hammerfall
No ram appears
in a thicket

For God so loves
the world
He provides…

His Son
His only Son…The Sacrificial Lamb

Maude Carolan


ANNOUNCEMENT:
I'm excited and honored to announce that my poem, "Between the Palms and the Cross" has won the Spiritual Award for Poetry at the St. Catherine of Bologna, Patron of the Arts, Festival of the Arts being held this weekend in Ringwood, NJ. I will be reading the poem at the poetry reading, in the upstairs room, at the festival, 7:30 this evening. All are welcome to attend.

The poem will also be featured on this website as one of my posts during Lent.

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