This week's readings are Genesis 24:34-38,42-49 and Matthew 11:16-19,25-end.  The Genesis reading is another chapter from the life of the family of Abraham - in this instance it's a few select verses from the middle of a long and complicated story explaining how Abraham's servant finds a wife for Isaac.  If you have time to read the whole chapter do, or I suspect just reading the extract set before us will be something of a puzzle! 

Abraham's servant is sent out into the world with a very precise command - to go and find a wife for Isaac, from his grandfather's family; but almost impossibly vague... where is he meant to find her, and how is he meant to persuade her when he finds her...  Still he goes, he sets out - in the belief that God has blessed his master - and trusting Abraham's promise that an angel will guide him.

So, obviously, faced with the immensity of the task, and finding himself on the outskirts of the old family town he creates an entirely arbitrary test condition in one of the most extraordinary prayers in scripture, ' 'O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. I am standing here by the spring of water, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. Let the girl to whom I shall say, "Please offer your jar that I may drink", and who shall say, "Drink, and I will water your camels"-let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.''

OK, he has to whittle down his options somehow - with a whole city to  find a suitable bride in (assuming Abraham's family even still live around these parts) - but seriously?  "I'll settle for the next girl I talk to, so long as she offers me a cup of water - because on the basis of that condition alone (that I've just invented out of thin air) I will know that she's the one that you, God, have chosen for Isaac..." ?!?

Still, in for a penny, in for a pound... the first girl that does indeed water his camels is the one on which he makes his move.  He asks to stay with her family for the night, amazingly she agrees - and then we hit our reading as he recounts to them this miraculous watering-station-fuelled revelation that this girl, Rebekah, is the one chosen by God to marry his master's son in a faraway and distant land, who just happens to be her cousin, where he has been blessed by God - honest!  And the real crazy kicker?  In the verse after our reading finishes, they agree, and so does she.

Abraham's servant seems to fulfil an almost impossible mission of finding a single person in a whole nation, by deciding that God will reveal them, by making them be the next girl to give him a cup of water - and then holding God to that made up test.  It's insane!

Or is it?  I mean, it seems to work.  So is that just my 21st century, post-enlightenment, empirical, coincidence-seeing  brain talking?  Is it not just possible that the creator of the universe is able to arrange things just like this?  So the right people, faithful in the right ways, happen to be in the right place at the right time?   Perhaps if I could relax my gaze a little , just enough to see past my preconceptions, I, like Abraham's servant, might be able to see the hand of God a little more clearly in the patterns of the every day.  Perhaps it's worth a go.  Who knows where it might lead.