LENT 2020: Day 17

• Lent 2020: Day 17 Monday, March 16, 2020:
  Psalm 81; Genesis 24:1-27; 2 John 1:1-13

Today’s reading from Genesis is interesting in that God’s presence is thick, yet as Brueggemann observes,“God is nowhere active.”

Abraham sends his servant (who is unnamed - and we should always pay attention to who gets names and who doesn’t) to find a wife for Isaac in Canaan. 

It’s Abraham’s idea. God did not tell him to do this.

Abraham makes his servant sweat an oath and invokes the name of the LORD in the process. Again, this is Abraham’s plan, not God’s.

And Abraham swears that the LORD will be with the servant. And, again, this is Abraham’s plan, not God’s.

So the servant goes to Canaan. But since Abraham’s plan was vague, the servant devises his own plan. And he speaks that plan to the LORD.

And the servant’s plan works. Again, this was the servant’s plan, not God’s plan.

Despite God being absent from the story, though, one of the main themes is the goodness of God guiding events.

That’s the big takeaway: God’s involvement in the world and in our lives is not always direct and tangible. In fact, I might venture to say that God’s involvement is not even usually direct and tangible.

And yet God is involved nonetheless.

God is at work in our lives and in our world in ways we don’t even realize. 

If we learn anything during Lent, may this be it.

And may we learn not only that this is true, but may we learn also to see all the many ways that it is true.