“I feel nervous about getting back into the busyness of life this week,” I wrote in my prayer journal a few years ago. “I don’t feel like I’ll have the capacity to do all I need to do… but I’m confident in Your provision for all You’re asking of me. So I reach out to You – and lean on You. You are my unmoving, stable سند.”
Living life in multiple languages creates new mental categories. I’ve learned words in Arabic that don’t have an easily correlated one-word meaning in English. I learned the word سند (sened) because it was the name of the brother of one of my Arabic teachers. She described a sened as something you can lean on – a pillar that can support your full weight. I was thrilled when I encountered the word in the Arabic Psalms (18:18, 54:4) where it is rendered in English translations as “my support,” “upholder of my soul,” or “sustainer of my life.” On the day I wrote the prayer above, I held on to God as my sened – the One I could lean on with my whole weight.
Last year I spent some time looking back through prayer journals from my first 7 years overseas. I encountered a number of themes, but one of them ties back to the last of Abraham’s altars in the Genesis account. When I don’t feel like I have capacity, God provides for the sacrifice.
The story is familiar. God blesses Abraham and Sarah with the son of the promise, Isaac. As Isaac grew, I’m sure Abraham was constantly aware of how he was to be the bearer of God’s promises to bless the nations. Then God appears to Abraham once more. Though the Scriptural account doesn’t tell us Isaac’s age, many scholars think he may have been in his thirties when his father summons him to hike up to Mount Moriah. He carries the heavy wood, obediently trusting his father’s direction. He notices, though, that something is missing. He asks his father, “The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” (Gen 22:7). And Abraham, full of faith, declares God’s provision: “God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering” (22:8).
There have been many times in my life where the Lord has asked me to do something that I am pretty sure I don’t have the capacity to do. As I walk toward projects, conversations, and the unknown, I feel a bit like Isaac: “God, I don’t even have the thing that You’re asking me to give.” And Abraham’s words resound in my heart: God Himself will provide the lamb.
“So the two of them walked on together” (22:8). God has not asked me to do anything as difficult as the test that Abraham faced. Many others have faced far greater trials, persecutions, and pain. Yet I am reminded that the Altar of Sacrifice is not the first altar to be built. The Altar of Obedience, the Altar of Pilgrimage, and the Altar of Separation all came before this ultimate test. Each of these experiences allowed Abraham to simply put one foot in front of the other, up the mountain. He kept walking, kept moving toward the altar.
“By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac” (Heb. 11:17). God did provide. He not only provided the sacrifice for that moment – “a ram caught in the thicket” (Gen 22: 13) – but He ultimately provided “the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world” (Jn 1:29). He was the One who would carry the heavy wood in the form of a cross up another in willing obedience His Father. And because of that sacrifice, we can live in complete confidence that God will provide the strength, the knowledge, and the capacity to do whatever He calls us to do. We lean on Him, the upholder of our soul, the sustainer of our life, our sened.