...Meet me at the altar in your white dress...♡♡♡

"Then he prayed, "LORD, God of my master Abraham, make me successful today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. May it be that when I say to a young woman, 'Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,' and she says, 'Drink, and I'll water your camels too'—let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master." - Genesis 24:12-14

Greetings! <-------[obviously not me, lol]  and hope you're all having a great start to a new week? I'm usually not a big fan of Mondays, but there was just this reflection on a particular passage of scripture that one of my wife and I's dear friends, the wonderful Pastor Mazino, shared with us last weekend, that I've just been bursting to share with you all. In case, you didn't already guess, it's me again, Wale, humbly taking the opportunity under my wife's gracious purview, to write a post for her Monday blog :)

What is this amazing reflection you want to share, I hear you all vigorously shouting. Well it comes from the book of Genesis and is a pretty beautiful story in the scriptures about how our (big daddy and) father of faith, Abraham, solicited his chief servant to return to the place of his relatives in Aram Naharaim to find a wife for his son, Isaac. At this point in the story, Abraham's wife Sarah had recently passed away, and Abraham ostensibly felt it would be the right time for Isaac to find a wife to help comfort him in his grief after losing his mother.

The story begins with Abraham calling his servant to him, and making him to take an oath to go on this journey and fulfil the job that Abe was entrusting to him. And it surely was a trust, since being released from serving under his master, and taking along with him on the journey a camel-driven convoy stacked full of gold, pelts and all kinds of valuable gifts, the servant of Abraham---if he wasn't a faithful man---could very well have absconded with the goods, abandoned his mission and lived the rest of his life somewhere in a foreign land enjoying the riches of his master. This last part is super important to keep in mind.

Gen 24:1-4

Abraham was now very old, and the LORD had blessed him in every way. He said to the senior servant in his household, the one in charge of all that he had, "Put your hand under my thigh. I want you to swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I am living, but will go to my country and my own relatives and get a wife for my son Isaac."

The servant was most probably Abraham's servant named Eliezer of Damascus in Genesis 15:2:

Gen 15:2

But Abram said, "Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?"

After swearing the oath to serve his master in his mission, the servant Eliezer also very importantly made a promise to his master to not take Abraham's son Isaac to the place of his relatives, if the women chosen as Isaac's wife didn't want to return with him to Canaan where Abraham and Isaac were living. It was important that the potential bride of Abraham's son would not be forced to come with the servant to the promised land; respecting her agency in making her own choice was paramount. It was also important that if she did refuse, the son, Isaac was also not be taken to the place where his bride originated.

Eliezer journeyed to the land of Aram Naharaim in Mesopotamia, which is where Abraham's brother Nahor founded a town bearing his own name, after he, Abram and their other brother Haran originally left their home in Ur of the Chaldeans which would have been located in what is today modern day Turkey. Aram Naharaim would later become the land of the Arameans, and was located in Syria, in which incidentally was also located the home of Abraham's servant Eliezer, Damascus. So, even now Eliezer had every opportunity to steal his master's goods and run home to his family in Damascus to give them and himself a better life, but he didn't thankfully.

The story continues with Eliezer saying a prayer to the Lord, asking him to direct him to the woman who would be his master's son's bride, by giving a certain response when being asked a certain question: [Genesis 24:12-14] - see focal scripture. The scripture records in the next verse, verse 15, that "Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel son of Milkah, who was the wife of Abraham's brother Nahor. Wow, Imagine that! Our guy, Eliezer, hadn't even finished his prayer before God answered it!

The story goes on and the servant asked the young Rebekah for a drink, which is his passcode phrase, and she answered perfectly in accordance to what he'd asked God about, offering to water his camels too; showing a very kind and serving heart. She even went further offering him hospitality at her home for the night. Eliezer obliged and they returned to her home and she told her relatives of all that had happened and how God had orchestrated this seeming chance meeting.

Rebekah's brother Laban, after hearing everything that had happened was pretty convinced that it was God directing this event and so had no objections to Rebekah returning with Abe's servant to the land of Canaan to meet her new bridegroom.

Gen 24:52-58

"When Abraham's servant heard what they said, he bowed down to the ground before the LORD. Then the servant brought out gold and silver jewelry and articles of clothing and gave them to Rebekah; he also gave costly gifts to her brother and to her mother. Then he and the men who were with him ate and drank and spent the night there. When they got up the next morning, he said, "Send me on my way to my master." But her brother and her mother replied, "Let the young woman remain with us ten days or so; then you may go. But he said to them, "Do not detain me, now that the LORD has granted success to my journey. Send me on my way so I may go to my master." Then they said, "Let's call the young woman and ask her about it." So they called Rebekah and asked her, "Will you go with this man?" "I will go," she said" - "cling cling"

So the story ends with Eliezer completing his mission, returning to his master in the promised land, with a bride prepared for his lord's son. It's a magnificent and inspiring story of faithfulness and the provision of God, but like many other passages of scripture in the bible, it holds a much deeper meaning for us as Christians in the new dispensation of grace under Christ. The wonderful reflection I've been itching to share with us for over a week becomes clear when you start looking for Christ in the Old Testament as well as the new. 

In this story we have a servant, sent by his master to a foreign land, to prepare a bride for his son, and being given riches in order to secure this bride. The imagery and symbolism becomes apparent when we reflect on the same used by Jesus in the NT many times in his parables to speak about himself, his church and his Kingdom. I'm sure you got it now! This entire story is a foreshadowing of God's commission to send his servants into the world to prepare a bride (i.e. the church) for his Son (i.e. Christ Jesus aka the bridegroom). In the story, Isaac becomes a type of Christ, Abraham represents God, and the servant represents the ministers of the Gospel, sent into the world to prepare a bride for the bridegroom. Now you see why it was so important for Eliezer to remain faithful to his trust. If not, the bride would never have been able to return with him to the promised land.

And I'm sure now you also see, how some self-proclaimed ministers of the Gospel have lost track of their own missions, and very unlike Eliezer, they've taken their masters gifts and absconded with them, squandering them in the foreign land, serving only themselves while the master waits for the Bride to be prepared for His Son. These ones need to repent. As for us, we should pray for their repentance and for God to remind them of this story and the very reason they were sent in the first place. At the same time, those faithful ministers of the Good News, who are actively working to prepare Christ's bride, his church, we should also pray for them too, that God will continue to keep them as faithful as Eliezer, and more importantly that God will help us such that we ourselves will be counted among them.

Let's not relent, brethren. Let's understand that like Eliezer, no matter how familiar and like home this world like Aram Naharaim feels, this is not where we're supposed to be. Let us be missionaries in a foreign land, like Eliezer, working diligently to be found faithful in our trust to prepare a pure and spotless bride for the Son, our beloved Lord, Jesus.

I hope this encourages you to push on in the good work of faith that God committed to you.

Have a blessed week ahead.

Love,

Wale