“…look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were digged. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you…” (Isaiah 51)
What a marvelous image for Abraham and Sarah — rocks from which we were hewn, quarries from which we were “digged!” And who is the “we?” Who has been mined from such a quarry?
The Jewish people certainly, and it is to them that this text applies directly – descendents of Abraham. But do not Christians also look to “the faith of Abraham?” To the one whose relationship to God was based solely on “faith,” and do we not see a similar faith in the one God raised from the dead? And Muslims — do they not also look to Abraham as the first model of complete “submission” to the one God, which is central to Islam?
Of course, all three faiths have strayed from that pure and simple faith. Jews are divided into at least three camps and many more gradations of so-called “secular” Jews. Christians have splintered what we call the “Body of Christ” into thousands of competing (and sometimes warring) “denominations” (where do we find that word in the Bible?). And Muslims are pitted against each in quite literal wars, Shiites against Sunnis most notably.
Yes, we have all “sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But it helps to remember the essence of that originial Abrahamic (and “Sarahic”) quarry. It is “simple,” naked faith (radical trust) in the One who was at the dawning (or rather explosion) of creation itself; Who yet guides its unfolding; and Who will still be sovereign at its final culmination.
We trust that One…for there is no Other…
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