Genesis 22:5

And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.

There is a quiet confidence in what Abraham says here that is easy to miss if you read it too quickly.

He tells the young men, “You stay here. We will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.” Not I will come again. We will come again.

That is not wishful thinking. That is faith speaking.

And even the word “lad” is interesting. It can refer to someone much older than we might picture. Isaac could very well have been a grown man, even in his thirties. That lines up in a striking way with Jesus, who was about thirty when He went to the cross. Again, the parallels are not forced. They are just there.

But what really stands out is Abraham’s confidence.

Hebrews 11:17-19 tells us what was going on inside his heart:

By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,

Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called:

Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.

Abraham knew what God had promised. Isaac was the son through whom the covenant would continue. So even though God told him to offer Isaac, Abraham reasoned that God would have to raise him from the dead.

That is incredible, because at this point in Scripture, resurrection had not yet been demonstrated. Abraham had no example to point to. No precedent. No story to fall back on. He simply trusted that if God said it, God would make it happen, even if it meant doing something that had never been done before.

So when Abraham says, “we will come again,” he is not speaking loosely. He is declaring what he believes God is able to do.

And I think that is where this really lands.

Faith is not pretending things will work out the way I want them to. Faith is holding on to what God has said, even when what He asks seems to contradict it. Abraham did not understand how it would all come together, but he trusted the character of the One who spoke.

So he walks up the mountain with Isaac, fully intending to obey, and at the same time fully convinced that somehow, some way, Isaac is coming back down with him.

That is deep trust.

And it challenges me, because I tend to trust God as long as things make sense. Abraham trusted God when nothing made sense at all.