A Blessing from God I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies. — Genesis 22:17 Each week in synagogue, Jews read through the Torah from Genesis to Deuteronomy. The Torah portion for this week is Vayera, which means “and he appeared,” from Genesis 18:1-22:24. With the ongoing war Israel is fighting, I’ve been thinking a lot about the spiritual power of self-sacrifice for the greater good. Abraham’s Blessings from God I thought about this when reading this week’s Torah portion about the binding of Isaac by his father Abraham. After stopping Abraham from sacrificing Isaac, the angel of the Lord blessed him. Specifically, the angel told Abraham three ways that God would bless him. But here’s the interesting part that I noticed as I was reading—only one of the blessings was new. The other two had already been told to Abraham in earlier passages in Genesis. The angel told Abraham that he would be blessed with offspring as numerous as the stars and the sand, that his descendants would triumph over their enemies, and that the entire earth would be blessed through them. The first of these blessings had already been told to Abraham in Genesis 15:5 and the third blessing was stated in Genesis 12:3. Only this blessing—“Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies”—was told to Abraham here for the first time. The message here is one that is all too familiar for the family of those who are lost. With this blessing, the angel of God told Abraham that victory over our enemies sometimes requires us to be willing to offer up our sons and daughters, even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice. Let us all pray that God brings comfort to all the families of those who gave their lives defending our freedom. Your turn: Please pray for those who are work to create peace—and give honour to all those who have made the ultimate-sacrifice.
