Trust: The Mountain Nobody Wants To Climb
There is a story in Genesis 22 that most Bible readers walk past too quickly.
It is one of the most disturbing episodes in scripture. God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son, the son he had waited twenty-five years for, on a mountain in the region of Moriah. Abraham gets up early the next morning, saddles his donkey, and walks toward the mountain with Isaac.
This week's theme: Trust.
Today, what Abraham was actually leaning on as he walked up that mountain, and why it matters for whatever mountain you are climbing.
There is a specific detail in Genesis 22 that changes how the whole story reads.
Abraham has been walking for three days. He is at the base of the mountain with Isaac and two servants. Before they climb up, he says something to the servants.
"Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you." - Genesis 22:5
Read it slowly. We will come back.
Abraham, walking up a mountain to sacrifice his son at God's command, tells his servants that both of them are coming back down. Not just him. Both.
He does not know how. He has just been told to kill Isaac. But somehow, in his trust of God, he expects that Isaac will walk back down with him.
Hebrews later tells us what Abraham was leaning on. He believed God could even raise Isaac from the dead. That was the mechanism he was betting on, though the resurrection was not yet a familiar category. But even that is not the deepest thing. The deepest thing is this: Abraham did not know how, and trusted anyway.
Then, further up the mountain, Isaac notices something and asks the question every parent dreads. "Father, the fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"
Abraham answers, and his answer is one of the most heart-crushing sentences in scripture. "God himself will provide the lamb, my son."
He did not say "I will figure it out." He did not say "trust me, son." He said God will provide. And he kept walking.
You know how the story ends. At the last moment, God stops Abraham's hand and provides a ram caught in a thicket. Abraham names the place Jehovah Jireh, meaning "the Lord will provide." Isaac walks back down the mountain with his father, exactly as Abraham had said.
Here is what makes this story about trust and not just obedience.
Abraham did not trust the outcome he could see. He trusted the God whose plan he could not see. He walked up the mountain leaning on someone he could not fully understand, expecting provision he had no evidence of yet.
The mountain you are climbing right now may not be as dramatic as Abraham's, but the trust is the same shape. You cannot see how it works out. You cannot see the ram in the thicket yet. All you can do is keep walking, leaning on the God whose plan you cannot see, expecting him to provide.
He always has. He always will. Even when the mountain is steep and the wood is heavy.
YOUR ONE THING FOR TODAY
Name one mountain you are currently climbing that you cannot see the end of. Then say Abraham's sentence out loud, once. "God himself will provide." Keep walking.
A PRAYER FOR TODAY
Father, I am walking up a mountain I do not understand. Help me lean on you the way Abraham did. Provide, in your timing. And until then, keep me walking. Amen.
WATCH THIS
If today's post landed, my new video on the channel walks through what Jesus said about worry and the future. Twenty three minutes on trusting God when tomorrow is what you are actually afraid of.
OVER TO YOU
What mountain are you climbing right now? A word or a line. Every reply held with care.
God bless you, my friend.
The LowKey Christian
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