Recently, I attended the baptism of a young girl. I was not the officiator of this particular service, so I was able to sit and watch with passive interest. The ceremony was performed in a nearby river, resplendent with sunny, shimmering reflections that gave an ethereal air to the proceedings. As the girl rose joyously from the water, we all cheered. Then someone pointed out the “cross” that stood over the opposite shore.

A clump of old dead trees stood over the currents across the way. The branch of one had fallen across the overhanging stub of another, forming a prominent “t” over the water. What’s more, some of the south’s ever-ubiquitous kudzu had grown around the top of the old tree and the waving green leaves had formed a garland of sorts around the center of the cross. It was as though God had given us an impromptu vision poetically symbolizing the full import of the event that we’d just witnessed.

Believing such a thing requires no naive credulity. After all, God has given us such pictures before, even placing the cross of our Lord in various places throughout the Old Testament. Today’s story is a good example of this. Isaac walked up a hill outside of what would one day be called “Jerusalem,” carrying the wood of his own sacrifice (Compare Gen. 22:6 with John 19:17-18). He could certainly have escaped his aged father but, like Jesus, he submitted to his will (compare Gen. 22:9 with Luke 22:42). Meanwhile, Abraham promised him that God would eventually provide “the lamb for the sacrifice’’ and he did (compare Gen. 22:7-8 with John 1:29). Later, when God spared Isaac, we are told that Abraham received him back as though he’d been raised from the dead (Heb. 11:17-19).

When it comes to the things of God, our minds are like thimbles, struggling to contain the whole of a massive ocean (Isa. 55:8-9). Sometimes little pictures are all we can comprehend, but what magnificent pictures our God is often all too willing to supply.

Vince Hartford

Extended Scripture: Genesis 21–22