"Here I Am"

I'm reading in my (mostly) daily Scripture time through Genesis. The other day I was in the perenially disturbing passage where God calls Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as an offering to the Lord.

Abraham is addressed three times in this passage: by God, by his son Isaac, and by an angel of the Lord. All three times, his immediate response was the same: "Here I am." When he is called, Abraham is available, ready to engage whatever he is called upon to do. This is particularly crucial at the moment when he is ready to literally take a knife to his son and the angel of the Lord stops him. "Here I am" he says to the angel as he stands over his only boy ready to sacrifice him to the Lord if that's what is required.

It strikes me that this was Jesus' posture during his time on earth. "I must be about my Father's business" he says to his puzzled parents at age twelve after they scold him for staying behind in Jerusalem after a festival. "I only do what I see my Father doing" he says to his followers in the book of John. It was his perpetual availability and willingness to do the work of his Father, the bidding of his Father, whenever it was required or asked of him that made the Son the Son.

In my own life, I am much too goal and results oriented to bother to be so very available. Once I have fixed my eyes on a task or a work to be done, I can seldom be stopped long enough to hear my Father's voice. I would have killed Isaac for my gritty determined-ness to get the job done before I would have stopped to engage the voice of the one calling me to the salvation of my only child. My most frequent refrain, both to God and to others is "Not now, I'm busy."

One day this week, a student and I did a prayer walk around campus. We prayed great prayers for renewal, redemption, healing, repentance, the furthering of God's kingdom and God's work. But perhaps Abraham's simple refrain of availability to do whatever it is that God would ask of him to do would have been a more glorious and reckless prayer.