She was taken by a wealthy man's servant from all that she had ever known, because the servant had prayed.
Her brother and her father had made the arrangements; she would be a stranger's wife.
There's no mention of her age here, but we find out later that her soon-to-be-husband is forty.
Obedient Rebekah says, I will go, and she is sent away with only her nurse to be joined with Abraham's heir.
With time, the patriarch of the clan dies, and Isaac's barren wife bows in shame because she has no son to give her husband.
Twenty years of unanswered prayer pass, and finally the LORD answers her cries. Rebekah conceives, and there is joy in the moment.
But there is a struggle within.
Just when everything seemed right, a conflict was growing beneath the tent.
Why am I this way?
She had obeyed her family and left.
She had served her husband all those years, and waited for the child to come.
Despair had turned to relief when Rebekah heard, "Not one, but two! Not girls, but boys!"
But the laughter that had escaped her mother-in-law's lips at the sound of her news left this expectant mother with a question, Why?
Because...
God said nations and peoples, not one woman and two boys.
Because...
Rebekah was a part of God's story.
We all are.
Because all those moments of the silent struggle are really pregnant with purpose.
And so I wonder...
Maybe when we ask for good health, God has someone else in mind.
Perhaps when we ask for money, God intends for it to go to someone else.
And even more, when we see only one in prayer, God sees more.
A growing womb after twenty years of empty and Rebekah felt that she was finally noticed when in fact, it was never about just one; it was about a world that God so loved.
Because when the LORD gives, He gives with vision and with purpose.
He sees nations and peoples.
He sees the world, and He also sees the just one, and then He gives accordingly.
All He needed from Rebekah, and all He needs from the one who inquires, are those three words: I will go.
He took the nothing Rebekah had to offer, mixed it with joy and struggle, and created an entire nation.
He then watched that nation destroy His love, all the while just knowing that it was the only way for all peoples to one day know His immeasurable love.
I'll never understand His ways, but I still choose to bow and say, I will go.
God's will becomes my own,
and I laugh again.
