No Woman So Fair

  “Yes. Despair. Anger at God for asking such a thing. I was almost a crazy man. But one thought had been with me ever since God gave me the command.”

  When Abraham paused, Sarah urged him on. “What was that?”

  “I thought if God forces me to sacrifice the child of promise, then He’ll bring him back to life again.”

  Sarah was startled. “Such a thing has never happened!”

  “But the Eternal One—God Most High—can do anything!”

  Sarah held his hand in both of hers. “You love God with all your heart—better than anything else in the world. I think that’s what the Most High wants from all of us, but most of us can never give it to Him. That’s why He chose you, Abraham, way back in Ur of the Chaldees. He saw something in you that He doesn’t see in other men.”

  “What did He see?” Abraham whispered.

  “He saw a faith that was stronger than death, stronger than love, stronger than natural affection. I wish,” she whispered, “that I could love God like that and believe Him like that. I wish everyone everywhere could.”

  The two sat silently, and from time to time they looked up at the stars. Abraham suddenly squeezed her, holding her close. “We’ve come a long way since I shoved you into the mud, haven’t we?”

  “A long way,” Sarah agreed, her voice quiet. She leaned against him and said, “Look at all those stars.”

  The stars spangled the blackness of the heavens. It was a clear night, and they sparkled and twinkled like diamonds across the sky. “And our son, Isaac, will have children, and they will have children, until your descendants will be more than all the stars we see.”

  Abraham was quiet for a time, but he pulled the medallion out from under his tunic and held it in his hand.

  “Will you give the medallion to Isaac?”

  Abraham ran his thumb over the face of the lion and whispered, “I will give it to the person God tells me to. I don’t know what the lion means or this lamb on the other side, but you know, Sarah…someday another man who is better than I will look at this very medal, at this lion and lamb, and will understand its meaning. And he will also know that he is in the line through which the great redeemer will come.”

  Tears came to Sarah’s eyes, and he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Again they looked up at the stars, which seemed to be making a mighty chorus of music overhead. The two bowed their heads as they sat beneath the blinking, sparkling orbs, and Abraham the Hebrew, with Sarah, his wife, began to praise the Maker of all things.