The recurring nightmare of Isaac's memory of his father and the planned sacrifice make him wonder whether God would put his own son through the same horror.
My horror’d gasp drives me from sleep,
and all the years have drained to here.
The weight, this wood, still burns the skin,
my younger self who shoulders fear.
A hollowed laugh resounds in me,
as she, my wife, prays but too late.
For what assistance will He give,
the One who is my darkest hate?
Where can I turn to speak of this;
this memory: this sacrifice?
Each time I close my eyes in sleep,
my father’s hand, the wood, the knife.
Then he, who was my father, felt
that from me flowed a desert’s sands.
But now, he’s gone and all is fear.
The blackened hate of God’s demands.
If this supposed God of love
might care for me, this damaged fool –
would not His son be made to climb
some hill whilst carrying the fuel?
And he’d be stretched across the pyre
and like me fear his father’s hate.
And like me, doubt and question why –
but like me, at the last be saved.
Fr Mark Skelton is a priest of the Plymouth Diocese, a poet and has always had a keen interest in the interface between Literature and Theology.
