Post by Mark on Nov 20, 2009 18:34:19 GMT -8
Isaac and Rebecca had been married for nearly 20 years with no children. This was of great concern to them. Isaac did the one thing he could do (above the reasonable efforts toward that goal): he prayed. The Hebrew word "aw-thar" suggests a singular act of worship. He lifted his request before God as incense is offered to heaven.
Adonai, our God, answered his request in a direct and possitive affirmation: his wife conceived and became pregnant.
But, things didn’t necessarily go so well for Rebecca. The pregnancy was intensely difficult. She did the one thing reasonable (beyond all the applicable options) she could: she prayed. "Drash" suggests that she made regular and repeated petitions to God, "How come this is the way it is?"
Adonai answsered her a little differently than He answered Isaac, He said, "There are two nations- two distinct people (groups) in your womb… and they don’t get along so well."
The day came that they were born and the two kids were as different as two people could be.
There was a famine or a droubt in the land so Isaac and his family picked up and moved, probably from Beersheba, just a few miles northward to Gerar, where Abimelech, an old friend of Abraham, reigned as king.
The Philistines had a number of inhospitible reputatations. The one of greatest concern to Isaac, as was to his father Abraham, was that they liked (and had little inhibitions about aquiring) women. Entire populations would be destroyed because of Philistine raiders would come down just to farm off the attractive girls, killing, burning and destroying everyone and everything else.
Isaac was a little uncomfortable because his wife, Rebecca, was more than a little bit attractive. "I’ll tell you what,"he said to her as they approached, "how ‘bout we just tell everyone that you’re my sister."
Lots of things happen to us in life that catch us off guard. Lots of things are completely beyond our control. When we suddenly look up and find ourselves completely overwhelmed by our circumstances, we turn our hearts up and immediately cry outto God. It’s a natural response and completely reasonable for one whose life is defined by his faith.
But, when we can see things coming over the horizon, when we’re really not sure what to expect, we ofteni go through an entirely different process of reasoning. It’s like we trust God for the impossible (because we don’t really have any choice); but for the really hard things, we just want to try to work it out all by ourselves. He’s there if we need Him… and we feel a sense of security in that; but only when we’ve exhausted all of our own resources do we consider reaching out and asking for help from the Almighty One.
Messiah’s example of prayer in Matthew 6 was to pray for our daily needs- not just those that completely overwhelm us. Maybe if we considered our daily providence the evidence of God’s hand as opposed to our making it on our own, that might seem more reasonable. But we seem to have this idea that God is only interested (or to be bothered) with the REAL issues, not the trivial things of the daily routine.
It might have saved Isaac a lot of embarrassment should he have trusted God with everything. It might change a lot of things if we understood prayer to be a intimate communion as opposed to the divine bat signal.
As it turns out, God took care of Isaac and Rebecca. Abimelech was looking out from his veranda and caught Isaac kissing Rebecca. While the morality of the Philistines was questionable in a lot of areas, even he recognized, that’s not the way a brother kisses his sister!
Abraham probably didn’t share too much of this story to his son; but Abimelech would have keenly recognized this scenario. Years before, Abraham had come into town with a beautiful woman, claiming that she was his sister. Abimelech had taken a particular fondness to Sarah and claimed her for himself. He brought her into his harem to be prepared and later presented for his pleasure. God met with Abimelech that night in a dream. God has this way of geeting our attention. He said to Abimelech, "You’re a dead man." That’s not the sort of conversation with God that a man is soon likely to forget. He would see to it that Isaac and Rebecca were preserved, just as he had for Isaac’s parents.
God has this way of keeping us safe despite our attempts to get through things on our own. Yet, if we would just start and continue in prayer, it might save us a good measure of humiliation.
