On the Alter

I think often about the story of Sarah and Isaac from the Bible. The promise of Sarah’s life she had waited for decades to receive was the gift of a son. But then God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. But God’s intention was never to let that boy die. An angel intervened and sent a ram in his place and Sarah got her son back alive and well. Reading stories that seem like fiction is worlds apart from living inside of a reality where a mother is made helpless to save what she loves the most. I feel helpless and all day everyday I do my best to cast my worry upon Jesus – to remember that he is the author and finisher of my faith and my story and he’s not done with this script yet.

Perhaps more than anything, I’m just needing to encourage my own soul right now. I’ve seen miracles and so I know God can do it again. But I’m battle weary in praying alone each night in a puddle of my own tears. So if God lives in us and we are to help carry one another’s burdens. Maybe distributing these prayer candles will give me the strength to keep praying – not only for my son to be healed and rescued from his situation but for others too who are going through various trials. Maybe these little lights can somehow connect our hearts together and we can be one voice in one accord asking our Heavenly Father to intervene for all of our children and the orphans & fatherless above all as the scripture says in James 1:27:

²⁷ The only religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans, fatherless and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

I’m not sure where my job will send me tomorrow but I have hundreds of candles packed in my bag. I will leave them wherever I journey and believe that God will place them in the exact hands where they belong. For the prayer warriors, the faithful and the ones who could use a little faithful support too.

I hear this tonight in my inner voice – Proverbs 3 5-6:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶ in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.^[a]

So I don’t need to know where I’m going tomorrow. I just need to trust the Lord and know that he will set my path before me and he has good reason for putting this assignment on my heart.