This entry by Oswald Chambers is very difficult to read. It makes me stop and think......when are the times I have heard something very hard from God and ignored it......or diminished it.....and made it less than the starkness of His demand for total surrender to Him.....with the giving up of everything else that I would place before Him in my life. Then there is the reminder that Jesus never cajoled anyone to come to follow Him....He never made the narrowness of the path to righteousness easy to follow.....in fact, He continually warned that things would be rough.....and only a few will really walk His way......and today this reading is such a reminder of what He meant.
I have had friends that have questioned, "How can God be a loving God and ask Abraham to sacrifice his son?" This is a question that is genuinely being asked because from my standpoint as a parent, it is something that is absolutely abhorrent to even think about. Sacrificing my child for anyone.
When our children were born we took each one to our pastor and had them dedicated to the Lord. What this meant to us was that we were recognizing that God had blessed us with the beautiful baby to care for and raise.......and we wanted to recognize outwardly that we were giving the baby back to God...... We would do our best with our children to teach and mentor them but we realized they were a temporary gift.......on loan from God... and their lives were His......
When we took Jeremy, our first born, in and the pastor asked if we realized the fact that our children were on loan only but belonged to God to do with as He saw fit......we answered, yes.....and then he asked us to tell God that we were giving our child back to Him at this moment....trusting Him with the life of our baby. I have to say that I paused....it was not easy.....we loved Jeremy so much and the idea that maybe God might actually take him from us...... We were stating right then that it was our sacrifice of love and trust in God who had given us this baby to give him back.....it was so hard.....but the truth is that we have no control over many things that come into our children's lives and God does.....so why am I thinking I can somehow hold any of our children and protect them better then their heavenly Father? We repeated this dedication with each of our three children and it was never something we did lightly because we loved each of them so much....
Oswald Chambers in writing about the rich young ruler says, "."Jesus did not show the least concern that this rich young ruler should do what He told him, nor did Jesus make any attempt to keep this man with Him. He simply said to him, “Sell all that you have . . . and come, follow Me.” Our Lord never pleaded with him; He never tried to lure him— He simply spoke the strictest words that human ears have ever heard, and then left him alone....And Jesus did not go after him, but let him go. Our Lord knows perfectly well that once His word is truly heard, it will bear fruit sooner or later." The rich young ruler needed to give up everything and follow Jesus....his valued possession was riches.....ours is the love for our children. Finally he ends this reading with these words that are so encouraging and so gentle, "I wonder what we will say when we finally make up our minds to be devoted to Him on that particular point? One thing is certain— He will never throw our past failures back in our faces."
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