Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." And He said, "Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you."
The Ultimate Sacrifice
C. S. Lewis said, "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken."
Abraham must have felt that way. He had waited 25 years to receive the blessing that God had promised him on the day he packed up his family and possessions and left Haran. He had waited 100 years to receive a very special son. How his heart must have ached when God commanded him to take his only son, his precious Isaac, and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on Mount Moriah. Even though he responded in faith, we can't imagine the hurt. It was the ultimate sacrifice.
But Abraham is not the only one who was ever asked to make an ultimate sacrifice. God, too, gave His only begotten Son. The apostle Paul reminds us that God "did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all" (Rom. 8:32). And Peter draws our attention to the fact that "you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Pet. 1:18-19). God knows the pain of an ultimate sacrifice.
Has God asked you to make a sacrifice? Perhaps it's been the loss of a child, a cancer diagnosis, a bankruptcy. Do you feel that your life is in ashes, hopeless and irrecoverable? Lift your eyes to the Lord. Ask Him to meet you at the point of your need. God understands. He will comfort you.
The greater the pain, the greater the compassion.