“God Will Provide A Lamb”

God Will Provide

I want the faith of Abraham. Yes, I know I’m not supposed to envy others, but seriously! Abe had a double dose of faith.

God promised to greatly increase his numbers and then asked him to sacrifice his only son. There has to be a major disconnect there. You can read the story here in Genesis 22. But, Abraham set out the next day to obey. He trusted God to keep His word. He even told his servants that he and the boy would return. (verse 5) When his son Isaac asked where the sacrifice was, Abe simply said, “God will provide the lamb.”

Faith in God’s plan. Faith in God’s promise. Faith that – at the same time Abe and Isaac were climbing up that mountain to God’s predetermined spot – God was sending a lamb up a different path to die on the altar that Abe had yet to build.

What a great faith! And a great picture of God’s love for us.

God provided a lamb for us, too.

Jesus was our lamb. When Adam and Eve broke communication with God by sinning, God made a plan to repair the connection. Just like God sacrificed an animal in the garden to provide skins for Adam and Eve to cover themselves, He prepared a sacrifice for us to cover our sin.

Jesus was our lamb. He willingly walked up the hill to the cross. He faced excruciating torture and a horrible death so that you and I can one day walk with God. And just like God gave Abe a ram – a strong, adult male (more than Abe expected) – in place of a small, helpless lamb, He gave us His Son who was more than capable of breaking the bonds that held Him. He could have called an Angel Army’s Special Forces to extract Him. But He knew: God will provide…Him.

Lessons in the Art

The art today started as a page in my “Clean Up Journal” where I clean off brushes and my brayer when I’m working with my gelli plate. Here’s the mess I started with.

I’ve been looking at this page for months with no idea what it could become. It was a wreck. I was so disappointed in the blobs. They seemed such a waste of space.

But today, I turned it on its side so that the cream became the lamb. And when I saw the lamb, I saw the rest. I hadn’t expected that it could become anything useful.








Then I added a bit of pen work. Not bad for a page done in a hotel room with limited supplies! I know I’ll add more to it later. We’ll see what it will become.

And God used this quick art page to teach me about myself and His ways. The most important thing I learned was that God saw me as the mess I was, and He turned me over and transformed me into something He could use. Like the page today, He’s not finished with the work yet, and I’m still a bit rough around the edges. But with a bit of work and some just-at-the-right-moment insight, something surprising can come about.

Sigh. Lessons from a blobby mess. God is good. All the time.
All the time. God is good.

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