Call me Ishmael, Easter, 2025

“It’s a good Friday because Sunday is coming!”

P. Wickham

This Easter season, I want to tell you about my puppies. I have taken to calling them my Ishmaels after Ishmael in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Abraham had grown impatient with God’s promise of an heir and decided “to help” God out and take the matter into his own hands. Ishmael was born and the consequences of Abraham’s impatience still reverberate in the world today.

For me, I was struggling with financial problems and even though I felt assured by God that He would handle them, I didn’t trust Him. I, too, was impatient and made the unilateral decision to birth the puppies. I reasoned that the pups could be sold and “help me” out of my financial problems. As a result, we had nine adorable pups in October, in time for Christmas! It looked like my plan would be profitable… until it wasn’t. I could only sell five and then one came back…

Now God, as He does, has used the pups in my life in beautiful ways though, incidentally, none of those ways have been financial, but let’s fast forward to this season of Lent. 

I have been so aware of my shortcomings lately. My lack of kindness, my self protection, my hiding. My lack of kindness acted like a glaring light exposing a deeper part of myself that was filled with need and grasping; with a desperation and fear hidden beneath my surface that I was unable to cast off.

I decided to sit in prayer with this sense of my own ugliness in a tenuous attempt to understand where it was coming from…

As I did this, I got a text from someone who took two of my puppies and is now in need of giving them back. This news pummeled me as my fear and guilt flared and this sense of my ugliness overtook me. I cried out, “Is this how You answer me, God?”

I then reacted, to fix it. I reasoned that I should take the pups back because it was the right thing to do and because it was far too painful to consider relinquishing them to a shelter. I knew it wouldn’t be wise to take them but I couldn’t give them up and so I was caught once again by the consequence of my own impatience.

I laid all this rawness before God, as I should have done in the beginning, and I pleaded in prayer for relief and direction.

His answer came in the words of my Pastor who quoted J. Eliot: 

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose

I became electrically aware of how outrageous it was for me to look for a way to make up for my own impatience and sin. In so doing, I was making Jesus worthless in my sight as I made myself in need of being my own savior. It was no wonder I was feeling desperately afraid and ugly. I was believing an impossible lie! 

The truth is that it is not the work of my ugly grasping but His work on the cross that saves me. He saves me from my errors and redefines my priorities. He even allows me to treat Him as worthless so that I might truly know my worth to Him.

I can trust Him with my pups, among all things. I can give them up into His care because He is trustworthy! He is able to handle and redeem my burdens, of all weights and sizes. Because He first chose to be broken for, and by me, He now chooses to walk beside me in my own brokenness. He offers me His presence as the cure for my ugly!

And what’s more! He perfectly timed all of this right at the point of my need where He is always waiting to meet me.

I am no fool when I give to God what I, literally, cannot keep, to gain what I cannot lose with Him.

Hallelujah! He lives, in deed!

It is a good Friday, 

AMRB/JCIM

Easter, 2025