December 4

Provision on the Mountain

Three days into the walk, a boy carrying firewood up a hill asks his father about the supplies. The lamb is missing, and Isaac is the one who says so. It is a practical question, and everything in the chapter turns on how his father answers it.

Abraham answers without explaining, and whatever he understood about what was ahead, he kept walking and kept his son beside him.

Isaac said to Abraham his father, "My father?"

He said, "Here I am, my son."

He said, "Here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"

Abraham said, "God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." They both went together.

The Lord's angel called to him out of the sky, "Abraham, Abraham!"

He said, "Here I am."

He said, "Don't lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."

Abraham looked up and saw a ram behind him, caught in the thicket by his horns.

Abraham called that place "The Lord Will Provide." As it is said to this day, "On the Lord's mountain, it will be provided."

Genesis 22:7-8, 11-12, 13a, 14

The ram was behind him in a thicket, unmentioned until now. God's provision was already in place, and it came into view at the top of the climb.

Then Abraham gives the place a name, The Lord Will Provide, and the text says the saying was still in use long afterward.

Abraham had promised his son a lamb, and God supplied a ram. The church has long read Abraham's words on that mountain as looking further ahead, to the day John the Baptist called Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Isaac came down the mountain alive. God gave his own Son and did not withhold him, and the lamb Abraham promised was supplied at last.

Many of us are carrying something up a hill this December that we have no way to supply: a bill with a date on it, a person at the table who has been hard to talk to for years. The climb stays real, and the promise made on this mountain does not shorten it. God meets his people at the place of need, and Abraham's answer to his son held all the way to the top.

The thing you cannot supply has a name, and often an amount. Say both to God plainly. Then keep walking, and keep the people you love beside you. The mountain got its name from what God did there, and Abraham was not the last one to walk up a hill and find him faithful.

Lord, you provide. I bring you what I cannot supply and ask you for it by name. Steady me on the climb before I can see what you will do. You did not withhold your own Son. I trust you.