Living in the Spirit

July 3, 2023

Scripture Reading:

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67

Now Isaac had come from Beer-lahai-roi and was settled in the Negeb. Isaac went out in the evening to walk in the field; and looking up, he saw camels coming. And Rebekah looked up, and when she saw Isaac, she slipped quickly from the camel, and said to the servant, ‘Who is the man over there, walking in the field to meet us?’ The servant said, ‘It is my master.’ So she took her veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death. –Genesis 2:62-67

The story of Isaac’s employee traveling to find him a wife from relatives far removed is difficult for us to imagine in our times. Still, that was the way things were done in those days. I cannot imagine doing the routine chore of fetching water, a girl meeting this employee, agreeing to leave her family and everything she had ever known, and traveling with him to marry a man she had never met. She had obviously been raised to understand that was the way her life was to go.

There is a message of faith in this story. Faith that the culture and training she had received were to be trusted. Are we modeling a way of being in which our children and youth can trust? Are we training them in a way that will give them the confidence to enter adulthood ready for whatever they may face?

Prayer: Lord, help us raise our children to know your love and the faith to live your calling. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.