The Answer at the Well

Context

Abraham is old, and he has one task left before he dies: find his son Isaac a wife. Not from the local Canaanite girls, but from his own family back home, hundreds of miles away.

So he sends his most trusted servant with a caravan and one impossible assignment. Find a woman willing to leave everything she knows to marry a man she has never met, and bring her back.

Story

The servant gets to the town at sunset, parks ten camels by the well, and does the only thing a man on an impossible errand can do. He prays for a very specific sign. Let the right woman offer me a drink, and then offer to water all my camels too.

He hasn't even finished asking. A woman named Rebekah walks up, gives him a drink, and then volunteers to haul gallons of water by hand for ten thirsty animals that aren't even hers. He just stands there and stares.

When the family hears the whole story, they agree it is clearly from God. But somebody remembers there is one person nobody asked. They call Rebekah in and ask if she will go.

"I will go."

The next morning she is on a camel, heading toward a future she chose in one sentence.

What We Learn

The servant didn't pray and then sit still waiting for a door to open on its own. He prayed, and then he immediately talked to the first woman who showed up. The sign and the work were happening in the same breath.

We do the opposite. We ask for clarity and freeze, watching for the email or the call, while the answer is already drawing water twenty feet away.

The answer is already walking up to the well.