The Mysterious Story of Abraham's Sacrificing his son - Part 2

The three remaining questions from last post were:

1. Why Abraham is so highly spoken of throughout Quran to the degree that he is called "friend of God"?
2. What is the impact of Abraham on the world after him?
3. What kind of relationship with God is illustrated in Quran by the story of Abraham's life?

1. It appears to me that the main events in Abraham's life has one thing in common which makes him so special before God.  I believe that is his total devotion to God throughout his life as far as it is narrated in Quran.  He has proven his complete surrender to God by following God's orders despite all the odds. That is to say, he surrendered himself to the fire they had thrown him in as the punishment for shattering their idols into pieces.  Abraham left his second wife "Hajar" and his son "Esmaeel" in the desert of Mecca as God had commanded him, despite the extremely harsh conditions of the terrain he left them in, with no foods and water.  The action of sacrificing his son had also the same intention although it was not commanded by God and was stopped by God. Same was true about building the "Kabaa" (God's home) in a place that was uninhabitable at the time.

Quran has not narrated the story of Abraham's life from the beginning to the end, as we can see throughout Quran it only states the highlights or the most important points of an event skipping over the details.  Perhaps we can say that Abraham like any other human being was living a normal life and he was learning by trial and errors like all of us except the fact that he has made such a critical and determinant choices to surrender to God's command in the events that has been told in Quran.  In other words, we have been given our life time to try and learn for ourselves until we spiritually ripe enough to the degree when we can surrender ourselves to God with such a pure devotion as Abraham's ,when we are tested in certain occasions.  This implies we can all walk the path Abraham did, although I do not mean we can end up being a prophet or being so special to God.  Nonetheless, everyone can have a unique relationship to God which I believe is the underlying concept of God's being "Rahim", as explained in early posts. 

Speaking practically, we can constantly try to align our intention of doing the mundane tasks with God's satisfaction as we perceive so.  Yet there will be a few occasions in everyone's life when making a choice for the sake of God will appear against the norms, against our personal interests and perhaps could be very costly to us.   I believe those are the decisions that will fundamentally affect our life afterwards.  By the way of example, if we found ourself in an unhappy marriage already with a child or with children and we feel like God would be happier with us if we stay in the marriage mostly because of the kids,  while it is clear to us that we can have a better life if separated,   this decisions can tremendously affect the future life of the children and may bear an unexpected fruit which will worth all the hardship of the long years of patience.   Needless to say, I do not mean that we should stay in a wrong marriage at all costs. 

2. I believe Abraham's surrender to God so purely not only has made him a friend of God, as stated in Quran, but it also has impacted humanity tremendously.  According to Quran in the verses following 37:110 all later prophets' ancestry could be traced back to Abraham trough either "Eshaag" or "Esmaeel".  Therefore, it maybe reasonable to assume that if it wasn't for Abraham mankind might not had the greatest/dearest prophets "Moses", "Jesus" and "Mohammad".   In verse 37:100 Abraham prayed to God to be granted a righteous child and in 3:35-37 "Omran's wife" (Maryam's mother) dedicates her baby to God which led to the birth of Jesus.  

It is fascinating how prayer of a few individuals (other humans) have affected the course of history of humanity so drastically. This is while in the eyes of the praying person God may not have granted him what he/she wished for because mother of Maryam asked for a son but she gave birth to a girl who years later turned out to be the mother of Jesus.   In the same way, it might be faire to say that if Adam's sin in heaven brought his descendants suffering on earth, Abraham's actions resulted in guiding humans to happiness again.   My point is this is potentially the scope of the effects the our relationship with God can bring about. 

3.  I believe Abraham's relationship with God illustrates an ideal way we should connect to God, that is we are to practically commit ourselves to God and do whatever we do in life for him. That is the true meaning of being God's servant (which is not the right word I believe).  We have to conceptualize the image that Quran is depicting from our potential relationship with God and discover what Quran is truly about.  We are to find a word which represents total devotion, which gives one entity priority over all others in our life in practical terms , in our actions not in our words or merely in our feelings. We are here to find out this relationship by trial and error by a learning process of dedicating yourself to different things and beings until we realize there is only one supreme being which is worth sacrificing everything we have for. That is when we fall in the true love which is eternal and will include all the humans' as well.