Rebekah’s Journey to Goodness: a Friday of Preparation Post

Rebekah’s symbolic Journey continues as she seeks the Fruit of Goodness.
Her life sometimes causes her to question God and complain.
Her struggles were real, as are ours today.

2000 Years Ago: Rebekah’s Journey to Goodness

Rebekah walked a short distance from the tent, enjoying the feel of the fresh morning breezes lifting her damp hair.  It would be hot later, but the early morning hours were cool and peaceful.  She leaned against the rock wall of the well to catch her breath.

And her sanity.

She felt blessed to be expecting after all the years of waiting.  She and Isaac had been married twenty years, waiting, waiting, for the children God had promised.

Then the miracle happened, and she was expecting twins.  Both Isaac and Rebekah were overjoyed.

But it was difficult to be excited when her insides felt like a war zone.  All day, every day, these two babies were kicking and moving as though they were fighting each other.  The pain was unbearable sometimes.  Honestly, there were times she almost wished she could die.  What was this all about?

So not to be disrespectful, but what was God thinking?

She raised her face to the sky, silently asking the question.  Her hands cradled her babies, hoping to calm them, as she waited for strength to draw the water to start their day.

“Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.”

Rebekah was astonished.  She sensed God’s presence so plainly that she could not doubt He had spoken.  One son serve the other?  Why was God switching up tradition and choosing the older to serve the younger?  The words swirled through her, energizing her, and not totally in a good way.  This was confusing.  God answered the question of the war zone, but this idea would take getting used to.  So God, please help me to have faith and see this as good, and help me to keep my thoughts subject to Your will.

Rebekah heard no more from God that morning.  He had spoken, and what God made was good. Period. Finally, she just needed to trust this judgment call.

She promised herself that she would ponder all this in the days to come, and perhaps God would reveal more to her.  But now it was time to prepare Isaac’s breakfast.

She pulled at the rope that hung outside the well, and then carried the brimming bucket back to the tent and the cooking fire.

Today: Finding Rebekah-Goodness

God, what are You thinking?

Why did You allow my daughter to be born with autism?  (or Downs, or Cerebral Palsy, or…)

How can You stand to watch as the storms roll in and destroy the beauty that You created?  (hurricanes, tornadoes, high winds.)

Can’t You stop the evil, misguided people who take guns (planes, bombs) against a mall (city, country) causing so much death and damage?

And in Rebekah’s story, why was the older son meant to be subject to the younger, when it went against the traditions You yourself put in place?  This seems like a recipe for jealousy, anger, and evil to swirl together in a roiling bowl of imminent disaster.

How are we supposed to find the Goodness in these wicked, dangerous, unhappy times?

How does God answer these major questions in our lives?

With Himself: God and Jesus!

“I was walking blindly into a new season, a place that didn’t line up
with my plans and dreams for the coming new year.
A place that I never would have chosen, never wished or asked for.
But God’s promise to Abraham spoke to me.
God wasn’t promising me ease.
He wasn’t promising that things would go as planned.
….a world without trouble, without heartbreak along the way.
He was promising me Himself.”

Katie Davis Majors

Katie Majors went to Uganda as a young woman, with a heart full of love for people there.  She opened an orphanage, and never looked back.  You can read her story in “Kisses from Katie.”  She’s been there ten years now, watching over her fourteen adopted children. Still there today, with her husband, they’re helping to make things better in this African country.

She wondered and “enquired” of God many, many times.  And God answered.

By giving Himself all those years ago.  His promises of so long ago, to Abraham, to Isaac and Rebekah… those promises haven’t changed.

God will be with us through the broken and the beautiful, and His Goodness is there, still with us, all along the way.

So is it okay to question God’s goodness?

This question raises another.  How does questioning God’s goodness make us feel deep down in our heart of hearts, and how does it affect our happiness?

So we say that it’s only realistic to question the bad stuff.  The temptation to question has long been part of people’s lives.  Psalms 4:6: There are many who say, “Who will show us some good?” So if we are questioning, we’re not the only ones.  But does that make it okay?

The reasons we question God’s goodness are usually because something isn’t going according to our plan, and what is happening is making us unhappy in some way.  Instead of looking to God for comfort and strength, we get defensive and ask why He’s letting this happen.  We start feeling sorry for ourselves.

Our happiness is definitely affected, in a very negative way.

No one can be a Pollyanna all the time, and truthfully, they are rather annoying, aren’t they?

But when we question God’s goodness, we are stepping outside our bounds.  We’re questioning God where He is.  That is not our place.  We’re putting ourselves in God’s place, and bringing Him into ours.  As if we know how things should be better than He does.

And we do this, not knowing the big picture the way He does.  While we have no idea what good can come out of a bad situation, God does.

So we need to hang in with faith through the broken times, and sometimes we’ll see the end good, but maybe, often, we won’t.

That still does not mean that God is not good.

He keeps all our tears in His bottle.  God will never forsake us.  He has plans to prosper us.

Sometimes we get to see the goodness happen.

A pastor in Zimbabwe was called to the side of a very sick grandmother.  They didn’t really know why she was dying.  She had not been diagnosed with anything, but there she lay, wasted and weak on her bed-pallet on the mud floor of her hut.

The pastor had a healing prayer.  Because this grandma was needed: she had two granddaughters, one only 3 years old, who depended on her for their total care.  Surely God would heal her, so these little girls wouldn’t be left all alone.

But Rosie got sicker and sicker, and finally died.  Who would take the little girls?  Finally, the only one willing was their other grandmother, who was a witch doctor in a village far away.

The pastor and his family were very uneasy letting the girls go to this woman.  They could only see sadness in that future.

What was God thinking, they asked.

They didn’t hear anything about the girls for a long time.  While they didn’t expect to hear about the girls again. they prayed for them often, and asked God to protect them from evil.

Then, one day, the grandmother was at the pastor’s door.  And she had a story.

The little three year old, she said, always wanted to pray before she went to sleep at night, and she wanted to pray before she ate their meager meals.  The little girl aggravated the grandmother with her constant praying.

And then, the miracle happened.  The three year old lead her witch doctor grandmother to God.  She gave up her spells and sorceries, and became a child of God.

The pastor and his family got to see the goodness that God had planned all along.

God is good, all the time.

When my spirit is heavy and the dark clouds hang low,
and the pathway I’m walking is a steep winding road,
In the distance a light is shining, beckoning on,
Bringing joy to my heart to know that God is still good.

God is good, all the time;
God is good, He’s on time.
God is good, He’s my friend;
God is good, till the end.

words and music by Roger Swarey

On this Journey to Fruit of the Spirit, may we feel and portray God’s Goodness.