Isaac, meditating in the field

Genesis 24:63

He went out to the field one evening to meditate, and as he looked up, he saw camels approaching.

Sovereign Lord, may I be silent before you for a time?

The breeze is cool, the field quiet, the grass moving gently, slowly. One forgets how still and silent these places can be when my herds are not on them, when I am far from the clamor and concerns of my household.

Stillness, calm, complacency before you, my maker. My soul is at peace.

In moments like these, father always says to remember. Memory is powerful, he says. Where do you think the promises come from? Instruct yourself, subdue your wandering heart. Remember!

I remember you, Lord. From my infancy my father spoke of you, told me of the day when he first heard your voice, the quiet voice telling him to quit the country he had so long known but which in his heart he hated, to come out of the forgetting of that city, the willful ignorance of that city. Father says that men there know and remember in their hearts the acts of God, some of them so recent, and that this forgetting is therefore an act, a choice. Same as in Noah's day, he says, nothing is new.

I remember his story of your voice, o God!

I remember his story of your promise to him, o God!

The promise. Me. Land. Descendants as numerous as the stars. The whole world blessed through this line. The family of Abraham taking refuge in you, shielded.

My father told me once that to understand the promise is to remember the words God spoke to him when he promised ME, when he promised the seed that would one day be like the sand on the seashore. God said to him, I am your shield, your very great reward.

A shield and a reward, both of them found in God, and both ultimately coming through you, my father told me. There is a thought. I know it is not me who sums up the promises, the thought of that makes me laugh. Me, a mere man, Isaac! I think I am the answer to the promise in some sense, for God promised him a son from my mother, and then I was born. But the promises are on such a grander scale! My father would point to the tents we lived in and say we are strangers here, the promises are far off, you can see them, but to lay hands on them is for the future generations.

A shield? I would ask. Then my father would tell me about our ancestor Noah, the great flood that washed the world clean and destroyed so much wickedness. Now a few generations later the world is just as wicked. Do you think God is not just? Do you think he will allow his creation to remain defiled? No, he will cleanse it. If you want to be sheltered from that, you must seek it.

I puzzled over this one for a while. God as a shield from God. It is in the promise, my father would say. We still see it only dimly.

A reward? I would ask. This was easier to grasp, but I loved to ask it to hear my father pour forth of the love, the faithfulness, the inexpressible delight that comes from nearness, from speaking, from the sheer knowledge of God, the one so inaccessible, so far off from us. These promises bring us near to him! my father would say, his voice rising. To possess him is all, to possess him is all.

Lord, my soul rests content here in the field. I know this possession of you, the fullness of this reward is for the future. But to possess the promise of it is enough to satisfy me. The grass, the field, the breeze, the sky, even the sound of approaching camels speak of your promise, the world still so good, even though the stain of our father's sin is present. It speaks promise, hope, newness. I wait for your fulfillment.