What may a difficult story be doing to us?
Sunday 12th April 2020
There is a paradox for Quakers meeting on Easter Sunday. Quakers do not mark out any day as more special than the next, every day is special. Yet in a culture that celebrates Easter whether for the holiday, the chocolate or the resurrection it invariably seeps into the minds of Quakers and thereby the meeting room.
Of course, currently, we are not meeting in a physical meeting room but a virtual one where we bring ourselves and our electronic devices. I actually phone in as my computer is unable to receive upgrades and can’t access zoom. Curiously I have a better experience without the visuals. I am more attentive and more in the silence. During the week we have, ‘a daily catch up’ by Google ‘Meet’. That is visual and with it, I am happy to see faces as it is a bit like being in a coffee shop or pub having a group chat. A friend phoned on Whatsapp the other day and I said to him, “ We don’t need to see each other let’s just speak.” There are times when I just want the freedom to wander in my thought and in my physicality while I talk, having to look at the person I find restrictive and less imaginative.
Returning to the meeting a Friend spoke of the difficulty they had with believing as some do in the resurrection. I should say that Quakers in my part of the world although largely coming from within a Christian culture many do not subscribe to traditional Christian creeds. Indeed Quakers don’t believe in creeds other than the one you have within yourself.
The Friend also spoke of a picture from a children’s bible that had horrified her as a child and continues as an adult. It was an image of a painting depicting Abraham’s sacrifice of Issac.
It caused me to think why both stories have never really caused me difficulties. In the first I have always understood it as a test of love, how much did Abraham love God? Did he love God so much he would be prepared to sacrifice his son? In Abraham’s case, he was not found wanting, as he was at the point of thrusting the knife into his son when a ram appeared and a voice was heard that instructed him to save his son and sacrifice the ram instead.
The image brought my 7-year-old self to memory and a day when I was walking through a graveyard. I was contemplating the death of Christ on the cross. I assume the graveyard invoked in me the reality of death and perhaps an image of Christ on a cross on a grave, connected me with his death. I remembering thinking, “Jesus shed his blood for me. Jesus died for me.”
I have heard it said, “ What sort of father would require the death of his own son?” Perhaps the same God that tested out Abraham. Was he testing out his own love for humankind in his test of Abraham?
I hear in Jesus’s voice what Abraham may have also voiced, “ Father if you can remove this cup from me please do but if you can’t I trust you.”
I did a Google search ‘a story where someone demanded a lot of their own child for the greater good of others’. It gave me the below article on Greta Thunberg.
My mind thinks that young people who decide on a career in the military are prepared to sacrifice their lives for their countries. The parents of these young people in a sense give them up for this cause. In the UK you can join the British Army at 16.
I wanted more and searched again bypassing all results linking me to COVID 19 tests. The one below caught my attention.
Now it doesn't give a modern-day story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son but it does give us examples of how people grew through testing. Causes me to wonder is it the test itself more important than the request and what it draws out of us.
Best day,
g
