Rebecca was doing what she did everyday when her knight in shining armor showed up on a white horse to ride her off into the sunset. Well…actually, no… her knight’s family servant showed up on a camel to take her about six hundred miles across hot and dry terrain to a new husband she had not yet met. 

While reading Genesis twenty four, it struck me that the young woman was performing the usual- going to the well at evening to get water for her family. How many times had she faithfully carried out that menial chore with no fanfare, nothing but boring female gossip going on there; another day of walking with a heavy jar on her shoulder to fetch water, then carrying a heavier jar back home.

But in one day everything changed. Abraham’s servant showed up and Rebecca, being taught to go the extra mile in acts of kindness, watered his caravan of camels and in doing so became the answer to Abraham and Eliezer’s prayer for a wife for Abraham’s son Isaac, the son of promise.

So many people in the Bible were carrying out routine and unassuming tasks of life when their “suddenly” occurred. In a day, everything changed.

David was in a field watching sheep when Samuel called for him to be anointed king. Moses was tending his father-in-law’s herds when a fired up bush started talking to him about being a leader of the Hebrew nation. Gideon was threshing wheat when God told him he was to be general over an odd army that would send the oppressive Midianites on a run for their lives. Simon the old priest, was carrying out his usual temple duties when the Christ child came through the sanctuary doors to be dedicated and Peter, Andrew, James and John were fishing when Jesus walked by and turned their lives completely upside down.

So what about us? What are we doing day in and out that is ordinary, tedious or even boring and are we faithful in it? Jesus said in Luke 16:10, “One who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much”.

Faithfulness is what He is looking for. The small thing we are called to do today could open the way for our “suddenly”.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving Christ. Colossians 3:23-24

Be faithful in the usual like Rebecca was. Tomorrow could be that new and different day. You never know!