The Servant encounters Rebekah

The servant prayed for a sign. He needed to find a wife for Isaac. He needed to find a woman who could produce value and contribute to the common good of the people in Abraham’s house. It wasn’t like he didn’t have a stake in this. He knew that he would one day serve her.

So the sign he asked for wasn’t arbitrary. He didn’t ask for her to be wearing a certain color, or that a dove should alight near her. He asked that the woman he was looking for would show kindness to a stranger. He did not go into the town center and announce his business – which given the obvious wealth of his master may have resulted in more candidates than he could have managed. Instead, he waited at the well for someone who would be kind to him, a stranger.

Rebekah was simply living her day. She was carrying water. She wasn’t on the lookout for some life changing opportunity that she could not have known existed. At the well, she did not owe Eliezer anything. Yet she extended not only the kindness he requested, but saw his need and watered his animals.

She saw him in his apparent need. She created value and offered it to him. Her only expected reward could have been running behind in her scheduled errand.

The stuff of election. Dispositionally, I like to think it falls out of the sky.   Rebekah was living it every day.