69 My Monologues : "you will be a blessing"(Gen12)

69 My Monologues and Musings:

'you will be a blessing' (Gen 12)

"I was over seventy when my aging father and myself were worried about increasingly scarce grazing land for our cattle and sheep. We had been toying with the idea of searching for new pastures for quite some time.

But then I thought:

Why should I go?

For whom should I amass all these wealth?

As i don't have any kids!

Neither any son nor any daughter!

It's highly unlikely my wife and myself will have any progeny of our own.

Because we are far advanced in age especially Sara, my wife.

She has biologically passed the childbearing stage.

No, I am not blessed to have a child, a son!

All on a sudden, the Lord God told me:

'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that i will show you...

I will make you a great nation..

I will bless you..

You will be a blessing...'

What did I hear?....

What did He tell?

He will make me a great nation?

I will be a blessing!

I thought to myself:

Come on..

Give me a break!

Here I am well over seventy and so is my wife!

And we haven't had any children!

Then how is the Lord God going to make me a great nation?

How will I be a blessing?

As it stands,

I consider myself a curse than a blessing!

After hesitating a bit,

I decided to follow his command and move out.  

I did travel along with my wife, with my aging father and with all the servants and the herd, cattle and sheep.

We have everything:

like riches, land, cattle and what not..

But we have no children!

We are issueless.

My wife seems to be barren.

And biologically she is beyond the childbearing age.

We did travel for an year or so halting in between.

Whenever we found good pastures we pitched our tent and let our huge herd graze there for a while..

Then we kept moving...

As we reached Haran my aging father passed away.

I almost totally felt helpless and abandoned.

My brother had died much earlier.

How could I ever consider myself a blessing?

My father had always been a solid support for me.

Now that he too is gone..

I felt lonely.

I kept thinking:

Am I a blessing?

It seems God is unaware of all that's happening in my life!

It's sad I had to bury my father in a foreign land!

I did debate within myself whether to continue my journey or to go back to the land of Ur from we had started off.

I often kept wondering whether God has forgotten the rosy promises He had made to me!

Yet:

Relying on His promise to make me a great nation I followed his command to go..

I continued my journey without a clear cut destination.

For long twenty-five years I kept on travelling and halting in between..

I was a Hundred year old.

Finally my son Isaac was born!

Oh, boy! Oh, boy!

I was thrilled!

I was grateful to the Lord God!

I just kept gazing at Isaac, my son.

Truly, he is a miracle!

He is a blessing!

Yes, I begin to feel for myself :

I am a blessing!

Finally I began to feel God did mean what promised!

'....you will be a blessing'

Lord, I am grateful indeed!

I am grateful, a thousand times grateful!

I kept thinking:

What more could I do to show my gratitude to Him?

I kept on thanking him and singing His praise!

As I got familiar with the indigenous people I noticed a strange and horror-filled local custom.

In order to give thanks to their gods and to propitiate them the local people used to sacrifice their firstborns as a unique offering to their gods.

They practised child sacrifice!

It was horrendous!

I could never ever understand it!

But then,

Slowly and steadily I too began to entertain the notion of sacrificing my only son.

It was a horrible thought to begin with!

Yet slowly but steadily I began to be possessed of this idea that my God wanted.

I felt within myself God is asking me to offer my one and only son Isaac as a sacrifice.

And He would be pleased..

I thought:

It would be an appropriate gesture of gratitude from my part to offer Isaac, my son as a sacrificial offering.

It is customary for the local people to sacrifice their sons.

As the days passed, I was convinced that the Lord God is asking me to offer my only son as a sacrifice, as a burned offering of thanksgiving!

I became convinced:

Yes God wants my son to be a sacrificial offering!

So I decided..

One day,

I got the firewood needed for the sacrifice,

I got them packed and had bundle of firewood placed on the donkey and took along my son and we climbed up the mount Moriah!

When everything was ready and I got my son tied up on the pile of wood stacks ..

Then the Lord God, at the nick of time stopped me slashing neck of my Isaac!

I told my God:

Oh, my God,

Though with a heavy heart, though I didn't grasp it fully, yet I was willing to offer my only son for you!

This was indeed a traumatic experience for me and all the more for my son!

Thank you! my Lord God!

I am blessed indeed!"

Thank you father Abraham for your heroic life!

You have been through a lot..

Ever since you married your wife,

You had been wishing, wanting and waiting for a son, right?

Even after the promises of God,

You had to wait agonizingly for another twenty five years to have your Isaac born to you!

In between, you thought:

'It may be Eliezer, the child born to me from the slave woman, may be, he is the one through whom I would be a father of a great nation.

At the same time my wife had plans too.

She wanted me to have a son from Hagar, her slave.

Thus Ishmael was born!

But we both got it all messed and  wrong.

It was Isaac who is divinely meant to be the promised child.

How wrong we have been!

Me and my wife had devised our own plans, alternate plans, different from the plan and promise of God!'

Oh, dear Patriarch Abraham,

Me too have devised my own plans and shortcuts in my life.

Me too have deviated from the plan God has for me.

In fact, I keep deviating and devising plans for myself and thus keep making many mistakes!

Oh, my Triune God, 
my Creator, 
my Sustainer, 
my Deliverer, 
my Comforter,

You keep calling me a blessing as you did call Abraham.

In fact, in your eyes, every human is a blessing, right?

As you know fully well I have had my own plans!

I have misinterpreted them as your plans for me.

Thus I have made mistakes big and small.

Thank you! my God, my Creator!

Thank you for creating me in your image and likeness and bringing me into this world through my parents!

Thank you, for giving me yet another birthday in my life.

I
Yes, I am a blessing!

Oh, Jesus, My Lord and My God,

Thank you

for keep loving me,

for keep saving me,

for keep forgiving me,

for keep forbearing with me,

for keep giving me yet another birthday!

Oh, Jesus, My Lord and My God,

Thank you for my parents, through whom I was brought into the world.

My dear parents,

Thank you my loving mother and father,

thank you for cooperating with the Creator and bringing me forth into this world!

Thank for your love!

Thank you for offering your lives for me!

I consider my myself  a blessing!

I want to keep trying to be as worthy as possible of being a blessing in the eyes of my Creator and in your eyes as well.

Thank you!

My dear loving Parents,

I consider you both as best blessings in my life!

And I want to keep trying myself to be a blessing you are proud of.

Oh, my God, my Creator,

I want to spend the rest of my life singing your blessings, the manifold blessings you had been showering on me!

'Bless the Lord my soul!'

Amen

JoAchen

Friday, August 21st, 2015

Joachenmonologues@gmail.com