Genesis 22

 Gifts

Someone very special to me made something very special for me. They spent a great deal of time custom making for me. Then they gave it to me. I loved it very much. I wore it for a while. Then I gave it away. I have to admit, it probably wasn’t the smartest thing I have ever done. It seemed like the right thing to do at the moment. It reminds me of the time many years ago that I caused some really cool property damage for God. I had just become a Christ follower. I was 19 years old and had been living in the subculture of drugs and alcohol during the late 60’s and early 70’s. I had reached a point of hopelessness in my life and was seriously considering exploring whatever options death could provide. In my young disillusioned opinion, life had run out of options. Then someone very special to me showed me a vision of Jesus I had never seen before by the way she lived. She gave a very special gift that awakened me to a new sense of hope and purpose. My life was miraculously transformed. I didn’t sense or see the need for drugs, alcohol or rebellion in my life anymore. Ever since that day I have been trying to give away that same gift to others. And that is what I was trying to communicate the day I committed the property damage for God. I was so excited about what I was experiencing; about finding the answer to the desperate existence I had been suffering, that I just wanted to say thank you in a way; any way that the world could understand. That is why it happened. Here’s how. I was working a construction job as a carpenter. My supervisor and I were sent out to repair a large overhead door. He needed someone on the outside of the door to help him as he worked on the inside. That is what he said. As I look back I think he may have just wanted me out of the way. While I was busy “helping” him outside I was daydreaming about how good God had been to me and was just being thankful when I began scratching his name into the panels of the door with the claws of my hammer. Not my supervisors name, God’s name. It was perfect. There were 5 panels on the door, the exact number I needed for my graffi…..sculpture. Jesus would be so pleased. Everyone who passed by would see his name and know that……as I stepped back from my masterpiece I had an epiphany. I instantaneously realized I had just indelibly carved His good name into someone else’s property. Jesus may or may not have been pleased but I was pretty sure whoever owned the door and the building that the door was hanging on would be…well that word starts with a p also. I hurried to the inside of the building to see if my supervisor was finished with me on the outside and ready to leave. Sweet relief; he was. I don’t think he ever knew. But I have never forgotten the reason for or the result of that moment. That is why I think of it now in relation to this story. I was flying home from visiting my children in Florida. As is my custom, after I am seated I usually pray and bless the people who have anything to do with the successful flight of the aircraft and then include something like, “Lord Please let me be seated next to whomever you want and let me tune into whatever you want for them or me.” (Sometimes I sit with people who God uses to teach me something. Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes I sit by myself. I don’t stress it.) This particular flight was full and there was a very interesting lady seated next to me. I noticed that she seemed a little stressed and preoccupied with some very important looking papers. That usually intimidates me. But at some point I initiated a conversation and it wasn’t long before I learned that she was a lawyer involved in the start up of a foundation for the protection and benefit of abused women in Washington D C. I am very interested in causes like that so we continued the conversation. I also learned that she has a daughter that just returned from a stint in Nicaragua. It was definitely a divine appointment. We landed safely, taxied to the gate and prepared to deplane. That is when she saw it. The very special gift that some very special had given me was hanging around my neck and came into view as I rose from my seat. I will never forget her words. She said, “My son would love that necklace.” I can understand why. It is a beautiful necklace. It was made with beads that I had brought back from Africa and had a little surfboard that someone very special had picked out for me and had engraved. This is where it always gets a little confusing to me. You see Jesus never did specifically say, “When someone sitting next to you on an airplane with whom you have just had a very enlightening conversation after you just prayed that God would let you sit next to some one for his purposes notices a very special necklace hanging around you neck made by someone very special just for you, this is what you should do.” I wish he had. All I know is that everything he did say is founded on giving and sacrifice and considering others first. So, as this lady was preparing her things to deplane I unclasped the necklace and gave it to her to give to her son. She was shocked and speechless but very grateful as I insisted that she take it. I just wanted to say thank you to Jesus in a way that others could see. I love Jesus and I loved that necklace. So I gave it away. When I tell this story to others the consensus is that I probably shouldn’t have done what I did. I don’t know. I may have been wrong but maybe that necklace was made for that moment. A few days later I saw the person who had made and given me the necklace. Without thinking I told her what I had done. Can you hear the scraping of the hammer claws on the door panels? I walked away from that brief conversation realizing that I had just created another “masterpiece” with my favorite artistic tool. The straight claw hammer. Ironically I hear those same hammer claws scraping away at the panels of biblical history in one of the most familiar stories in scripture. I was reading it again this week as I was processing these thoughts. God had promised Abraham that He would give Abraham a son to carry on his name and the purposes of God in the earth. Abraham waited many years and God still had not fulfilled the promise. Then when Abraham and his wife were past child bearing years God gave them a son. He was a very special son because it had taken a long time to prepare for them this miracle. And now in their old age they received this gift from God. Then God asks Abraham to do something very strange. He asks Abraham to give this gift away. Literally, to sacrifice it.

Genesis 22:1, 2 says this. “Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am.” He replied. Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, (your very special son) and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

Can you hear the claws of the hammer here scraping away at the foundations of Abraham’s psyche? “God you worked hard on this very special gift and you gave it to me and now you want me to give sacrifice it; to give it away? For what? What are you trying to say? What are you doing?” Those are great questions.

Here’s a good question. What would you do? What did Abraham do? You will have to read the rest of the story to find out and draw your own conclusions, but here is what the hammer scrapings say to me.

God is the giver of every perfect gift. He could give Abraham a thousand sons if he wanted. In fact because Abraham obeyed God and was willing to sacrifice what God had given him his people became more numerous than the sand of seashore and more impossible to count than the stars of the skies. God’s kingdom is built on obedience and sacrifice. Everything God gives us He gives with the idea that we will reinvest. When Jesus was commissioning his disciples for their first mission he said, “Freely you have received, freely give.” Abraham’s story was a preview; a foreshadowing of how God would offer and sacrifice his only son for the sake of the peoples of the world which He dearly loves. Heaven will be populated with people who understand and believe that fact. I believe there will be a little boy there with a very special necklace around his neck. And there will probably be a very special person there chasing me around with a straight claw hammer.

Just a thought

What do you think?