The Still Point of the Turning World.. continued

I want to add a bit more to my last post. I was listening to a message by Art Katz, and he brought up the fact that maybe the last thing that stands between a Christian and his or her walk with God is one's own sense of spirituality.. 

It's like Abraham. His spiritual walk with God was defined by his son Isaac; all of what he had been waiting for from God was encapsulated in the birth of Isaac, for it was through Isaac - and only Isaac (even another son to be born later would not be sufficient) - that everything promised to Abraham would come to pass. But God required that Abraham sacrifice his son, apparently therefore forfeiting all the promises to come through him. 

But Abraham was willing to do so, because he believed that God would even raise his son back from the dead, if that was required. In this, Abraham signified that even his own spirituality; the unique promises that set him apart from all others, and to which alone he held onto for spiritual security, he was willing to give up. The still point of the turning world cannot be reached unless one is willing to give up even that which one perceives as being synonymous with the desires of God, as only the true Purposes of God are worthwhile. 

Wolfgang Simpson, a German saint, once witnessed a windstorm in one of the dense old-growth forests of his country. Before the storm, the interior of the wood had been majestic, with the soaring trees above, and a clean floor below, uncluttered with other vegetation. Afterwards, when most of the trees had fallen, lush vegetation began to grow up. It had previously been hindered in its growth because the tall trees blocked the sunlight. His analogy, then, was that our own spiritual lives might seem majestic and stately, but it could be that this very status which we have grown used to is the thing which is blocking the growth that God wants to begin.

And in the end, God did not require the death of Abraham's son, but only the death of Abraham's own will, his own ambitions and sense of himself as himself, apart from God's desire for his life.