Waiting With the Donkey

On the third day of their journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. "Stay here with the donkey," Abraham told the servants. "The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back." So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac's shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. Genesis 22:4-6 NLT

“"Stay here and wait with the donkey," Abraham says to his servants, "while the boy and I go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."

This is where we find ourselves most of the time: waiting with the donkey—while God is working out the bigger issues with the Abrahams and the Isaacs of the world. We don't see the bigger struggles going on. We don't have to make the real commitment to die for our love of God or to sacrifice all we have. We simply have to wait.

But we are not waiting for nothing. We are waiting for them to come back.

That's the good part of God's stories to us—He always comes back.

Jesus came back to those waiting for Him in the Garden of Gethsemane as He prayed. He came back to those waiting at the tomb for Him. He came back to those waiting in the upper room at Pentecost. And He tells us He is coming back again with the blast of a trumpet.

"Stay here with the donkey, and we will come back to you.""

This is a passage from my book Genesis as I contemplated Abraham obeying God's directive to take his son Isaac, whom he loved, and go to the land of Moriah and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering. It was a story too hard to think about. Sometimes God tells us difficult stories. Sometimes God asks us to do hard things.

These last days I have had one ongoing thought in my little brain, which sounds to me like instructions from God; "…stay here and wait with the donkey…". Wait. And we will return.

What does this mean?

I think it means that I am not in the position of Abraham, who was asked to make the hard decision and travel the difficult path. I am not in the position of Isaac who must obey in darkness and lack of information and an apparent lack of reason. I am simply the servant, asked to wait.

Waiting is an active verb. I love the Merriam-Webster definition; "to stay in place in expectation of". Yes, I have expectations. But the outcome of my expectation is not up to me. Thank goodness!

Since I am a Christian, my expectations must be draped around the throne of God Most High. If I truly believe He is Sovereign and in control of all things that will lead to His Glory, then I must let go of my anxiety and dread and hopes and desires and place all of those unstable and volatile emotions at His feet.

But it is impossible. And so I open the Psalms and read and pray and praise and find comfort. This morning after walking the path with my good shepherd, I continued into Psalm 25. There I found the God of steadfast love and faithfulness, I asked for forgiveness for my great guilt, poured out my fear of the violent hatred of those around me, and felt the reassurance that the Lord would pluck my feet out of the net. And then there it was again, "May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you." (v21).

Waiting. We do not wait for nothing. Our waiting has purpose. It is for God's integrity and His righteousness. The servants waiting with the donkey had no way of knowing that God Himself would provide a ram caught in the brambles at the exact moment the angel would stop Abraham's hand.

The disciples waiting in the Garden with Jesus were instructed to pray as they 'stayed in a place of expectation'. And I think that is what I need to be doing as I wait with the donkey. I will continue to pray the beautiful prayers of David as he fought the giants and waited to be king. I will remember what awaited on the other side of the Garden and beyond the grave. I will wait. I will stay in a place of expectation that my God has already won the battle.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

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