Abraham! Abraham!

Gellman's Abraham! Abraham! (2003) has been a constant guide in times like these. Kierkegaard's writings are a treasure troves which not many have ventured but for the few brave souls, it is food for the soul and meat for the mind. Abraham had to offer up his son, in obedience to God, his one and only beloved son. Gellman writes of Reb Nachman that, "no one really can serve God. The main thing is the desire to do so. The ultimate, true service of God is the desire to be close to God..." (p. 17). When I read this, I realized that all my desires to serve God are full of human limitations and constraints. "Do I serve Thee for nought, Lord?" as the devil would challenge Job. But whatever desire for God I have, Lord You have put it there in the first place for we love Him because He first loved us. How can I serve this holy God whom holy angels dare not pry nor see into His majesty, only those whom God has chosen - those whom You have drawn near to Thyself, Lord.
As a teenager called by God, I knew my service for Him would be opposed by my father and mother, yet I had persevered due to Your call and the Spirit's compulsion. Now in the last third of my life, I stand before You again, alone like Abraham, ready to sacrifice all, even my only beloved son so that I stand before You, as Kierkegaard would say, not as father of a son, not as husband to a wife, not as a teacher to students, not even as pastor to his flock, but as an individual before God, totally open to all possibilities for only those who stand with complete freedom as individuals with all its possibilities can follow a God of all possibilities because He is I AM and where He is, all things are possible for there is nothing impossible with God.