A Bride Brought Home from Far Away

Sarah lived to be a hundred and twenty-seven years old, and then she died. Abraham wept for her and buried her in a cave near Hebron, and Isaac missed his mother badly.

Abraham was very old, and Isaac still had no wife. So Abraham called his oldest servant, who ran his household.

"Go back to my own country," he said, "to my own family, and bring home a wife for Isaac. The LORD, who promised this land to my children, will send his angel ahead of you."

The servant loaded ten camels with presents and made the long journey to the town where Abraham's brother Nahor lived.

He reached the town well at evening, when the women came out for water, and he prayed. "LORD, God of my master Abraham, be kind to him today. I will ask a girl for a drink. If she says, 'Drink, and I will water your camels too,' let her be the one you have chosen for Isaac."

Before he finished, a young woman came down to the spring with a jar on her shoulder. Her name was Rebekah, and she was Nahor's granddaughter. (The servant did not know that yet. God did.)

He hurried to meet her. "Please, may I have a little water?"

"Drink, my lord," she said, lowering her jar. Then she added, "I will draw water for your camels too, until they have had enough."

A thirsty camel can gulp down a whole bathtub of water, and there were ten of them. Rebekah ran down to the spring and back up, again and again, emptying jar after jar into the trough.

When the last camel lifted its dripping chin, he gave her a gold ring for her nose and two heavy gold bracelets. "Whose daughter are you?"

When she told him, the servant bowed low by the well. "Praise the LORD! He has kept his kind promise to my master, and he led me straight to my master's family!"

He told them everything, and her father and her brother Laban said, "This is from the LORD." So they called Rebekah in.

"Will you go with this man?"

"I will go," she said.

One evening Isaac was out walking in the fields when he looked up and saw camels coming. Rebekah looked up and saw him too, and slid quickly off her camel. "Who is that man coming to meet us?"

"That is my master," said the servant. Rebekah pulled her veil over her face.

Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and she became his wife, and he loved her. After his mother died, Isaac was comforted at last.

But the comfort Rebekah brought could not keep death out of that tent. Years later she and Isaac were buried in the same cave as Sarah.

God had promised Abraham that through his family, all the families on earth would be blessed. Isaac taught it to his sons, and they taught it to theirs, and still nobody brought the blessing to the whole earth.

Then someone else set out to find a bride, and this time he did not stay home and wait. He left his Father's house and walked the long road himself. Tired at noon, he sat down by a well and asked a woman for a drink. He called himself the bridegroom, and he is still gathering his bride from every family on earth.

One day the wedding will begin, and the bride will look up, the way Rebekah did, and see Jesus.