I love a good love story.  A real-life one is the best.  Maybe that’s why I like the story of Rebekah so much.  Rebekah’s tale started out sounding like a storybook marriage to a loving, wealthy, and godly man named Isaac.  You probably know the story of how this marriage made in heaven took place.  Isaac was the favored son of his father, Abraham, born to him in his old age by his dearly loved wife, Sarah, who had been unable to conceive until she was ninety years old.  Isaac grew up, his mother died, and when he was forty years old and his father, Abraham, was 140 years old, Abraham decided it was time for Isaac to marry.  But he didn’t want Isaac to marry a local girl who didn’t worship the one true God.  Instead, he decided Isaac must marry a girl from among their relatives back in Mesopotamia where they had immigrated from- a young woman who feared God.   

The problem was that Abraham didn’t want Isaac, himself, to return to their ancestral home to get a wife from their relatives.  He was adamant that his son remain in this land where God had directed them.  In Abraham’s mind, there was no going back.  God wanted them exactly where they were.  God had called Abraham out of his homeland to establish a new nation in Canaan.  And Abraham with his wife, Sarah, had been obedient to leave their home and relatives and come to Canaan.  It wasn’t easy to leave their comfortable life and start new in a foreign land, but it was what God wanted and Abraham and Sarah had been obedient.  Then followed decades of childlessness and they both had given up hope when God did the miraculous and gave them Isaac in their old age.  Now his beloved Sarah was dead and his precious son was old enough to start his own family.  

So Abraham devised a plan to get Isaac a god-fearing wife from their relatives.  He would send his most trusted long term servant to search for a wife and broker the deal.  She must leave her homeland and come to Canaan as Abraham and Sarah had done many years before.  Abraham’s servant who was appointed to carry out this important task was himself a God-fearer.  He had watched his boss trust God.  He had seen the outcomes and he, also, trusted.  Tasked with this assignment, he beseeched God to help him succeed so his boss’s son would get a good wife.

God heard his prayer and God arranged the arranged marriage!  God connected him to Rebekah. Upon receiving God’s sign that Rebekah was the right wife for Isaac, he stayed on task, politely, but persistently getting the necessary permissions from Rebekah’s family and pushing for an immediate closure of the deal which he sealed with expensive gifts from Abraham. The next morning Abraham’s servant pressed for an immediate return to Canaan. (Perhaps he sensed Rebekah’s brother’s character.)   What must have been whirling in Rebekah’s mind!  She had been going about her daily chores when a foreign stranger asked her for a drink when she was at the well.  Just a daily, mundane job.  But this day would be the last day she would be going to this well.  In the space of a few hours, her entire life took a sudden and unexpected turn.  She would never again see her father, mother, brother, or friends.  By morning, she would be headed for a foreign country to marry a man she had never met.  She would live the rest of her days in a distant land she had never seen before.  The only justification for this total upheaval was that God wanted it this way.  And so, she agreed.  She even had to give up her family’s desired ten days to prepare for her departure because the servant was adamant about returning to his master immediately.  When her family asked if she was willing to go on such short notice, she without hesitation agreed.  So hasty preparations were made.  Her family gathered around her and gave her this blessing before she embarked on an unknown life:

“Our sister, may you become
the mother of many millions!”

Then Rebekah, her childhood nanny, and some servants left with Abraham’s servant and his men.  With each rolling step of her camel, she was moving away from everything she had ever known.  When they finally arrived back in Canaan, there was a happy-ever-after ending.  

“Then the servant told Isaac everything he had done.
And Isaac brought Rebekah into his mother Sarah’s tent, and she became his wife. He loved her deeply, and she was a special comfort to him after the death of his mother.”  Genesis 24:6-7. 

Or was it a happy ending?  Remember that blessing Rebekah’s family gave her?  The one about being the mother of millions?  Well, she wasn’t able to become the mother of even one.  Twenty long years passed and the young woman who bravely agreed to marry a man she didn’t know because God said so, must have felt defeated and disillusioned.  What had started out like a fairy tale wasn’t turning out the way she had envisioned.  Yes, her husband loved her dearly, but their tent was empty.  No childish giggles, or little voices calling, ‘Mama’.  Isaac’s heart ached for her, so he did the best thing he knew to do.  

He “pleaded with the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was unable to have children. The Lord answered Isaac’s prayer, and Rebekah became pregnant with twins.”  Genesis 25:21  

We don’t know how long Isaac pleaded, but we know God heard and answered with not one baby, but twins!  Sounds like a happy ending, huh?  But things weren’t hunky-dory.  Seems the babies fought with each other before they were even born.  

“But the two children struggled with each other in her womb. So she went to ask the Lord about it. “Why is this happening to me?” she asked.
 And the Lord told her, “The sons in your womb will become two nations. From the very beginning, the two nations will be rivals. One nation will be stronger than the other, and your older son will serve your younger son.”  Genesis 25:22-23

She did the right thing to go to the Lord with her problem.   God was kind and explained what was going on.  As the boys grew up, sure enough, they were at odds.   And if that wasn’t bad enough, the boys who were divided against each other divided their parents against each other.  Isaac favored one and Rebekah, the other.  Altho God had clearly stated that the younger, Rebekah’s favorite, would be stronger and Isaac’s favorite would serve him, Isaac intended to make sure that didn’t happen.  Rebekah was just as determined that it would happen as God said.  But she took matters into her own hands and prevailed by trickery.  Isaac was aging and decided the time had come to give his favorite son the blessing that would ensure his dominant position in the family.  However, Rebekah hatched a scheme to thwart his purpose.  She used deceit and trickery to get her favorite son the blessing instead of his brother.  She got what she wanted, but paid dearly for her victory.  Her favored son had to flee for his life after hearing the threat of his cheated brother.  Rebekah never saw her beloved son again.  She died before he returned to live in an uneasy peace with his brother in the land.  And we can imagine that her relationship with her husband was strained by her part in tricking her blind husband into blessing the “wrong” son.  

So what can we learn from this happy/sad tale?  Obeying God gives us a full life, but it doesn’t make us immune to life’s disappointments and struggles.  We can go to him at any time for help.  He knows us intimately and tenderly cares for us.  Trying to do the right thing in the wrong way never pays off.  The ends don’t justify the means.  God can handle working things out- his way.