SCRIPTURE:     Genesis 24:17-18   (Rebekah at the well)

 17The servant hurried to meet [Rebekah] and said, "Please give me a little water from your jar."  18"Drink, my lord," she said, and quickly lowered the jar to her hands and gave him a drink

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            At God's direction, Abraham had left his Mesopotamian homeland, " Aram of the Two Rivers."  He left his family, his friends, the settled and predictable life he had always known…pulling up stakes to go to a land and a future he did not know and had no control over.   And Abraham answered that call, becoming thereby "the Father of Faith" for the three great religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

             And now Abraham's servant has come back to the homeland, seeking a suitable bride for Abraham's legitimate son and heir, Isaac …the heir of God's promises to Abraham, through whom the experience of the One God will be passed on to Abraham's descendants, even (in the end) to us!   And his path, through the providence of God, crosses the path of a young woman who turns out to be Abraham's great-niece.

             Abraham's servant asks Rebekah for a drink …a normal enough request, and a normal enough courtesy in response, in such a barren and arid land.  And Rebekah gives him a drink.  But she does much more than that.  She not only gives water to the man, but draws also for all his camels, for the whole caravan, until man and beast alike have had enough.  This is way and above the call of normal duty!  Thus Rebekah becomes a symbol of abounding generosity, of overflowing compassion, of one who spends her life, who pours out her life, for others…which is also, we know through the cross, the very nature of God himself!

             Water is an image, an "icon" of life.  Both science and Scripture agree that life began in the waters. And through the waters of the Red Sea , God led his people from Egyptian slavery to freedom in a Promised Land; in water we, in turn, were baptized; and from Christ's pierced side "both blood and water flowed mingling down," who poured out his life for the life of the whole world.

And Rebekah pours out her life like the water she pours into the trough for the servant and his camels.  Like Abraham, at the inner prompting of Abraham's mysterious God, she sets off for an unknown land and an uncertain future.   She knows that God will be with her, and within her, welling up like a spring of water in her inmost soul; and she knows that God will take care of her, wherever she goes, for all the days of her life…and beyond! 

PRAYER: Dear Lord, May WE have such faith, also, and drink from the eternal water springing up unto eternal life, which water, and which life, dwelling within us by the Holy Spirit, is Christ the Lord, who is our peace!

                                                                        Amen.

Whether you believe or not water is the well spring of life, blessings the season.