Obedience and Sacrifice

Looking back on the past year, I realize how greatly I have been blessed, and that leads me to reflect on how I have changed and what I need to change. This period of reflection comes on the anniversary of my falling and breaking my leg and the subsequent surgeries and rehabilitation. To many (including several of my patients), what I have been through pales in comparison to their life-changing experiences. I don't want to focus on what has happened, but on how I can use what has happened to become closer to what God wants me to be.
I was reading the story of Abraham and Isaac again and was struck with the realization that Abraham, asked to sacrifice his only son, was fully obedient and did not question why he was being asked to do something so drastic. He did not make excuses, did not whine and complain, and he did not try to bargain God into another calling. He simply did what God asked him to do. Not only was he asked to kill his only son, but this was the son of promise- the son through which all of Abraham's dreams were to be fulfilled. He wasn't just sacrificing his son, but his dreams as well. And he called it "WORSHIP"!
I have never had the call to make such a great sacrifice. I have not been asked to give up my child, give up my dreams, give up the very thing that occupies my thoughts and prayers. But I have been called to be obedient and I have been called to follow. The story of Abraham and Isaac shows me that true worship is costly. I pray that I can say, like David, "I will not offer to the Lord my God that which costs me nothing".

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