I love marinated food, especially meat.  I also enjoy a good marination of biblical themes.  Lately, a theme that’s been marinating in me has been one of abandonment towards God’s calling.  Earlier this month, I did a post on Joseph’s obedience to God and what it cost him personally.  Today, I’ve been reflecting on Rebekah’s obedience to God’s calling found in Genesis 24.  She went out to get water as I imagine she did every day, maybe even multiple times a day.  I imagine countless times before when nothing much out of the ordinary would happen on those trips.  Maybe she couldn’t always predict the other young women she would run into but other than that, i imagine she could give me a list of possibilities as to what could happen when she drew water.

I think I could confidently predict she wouldn’t have on that list, meet a man servant who would within a day of meeting him, require her to leave her entire family, travel by camel to a new land, and to marry a man who claims to be following the will of the Lord.  Seeing God’s hand in it all, she chooses to go.  She doesn’t even beg like her mother to have ten more days together.  She just leaves the next day.  Less than 24 hours, she leaves her family, her clan, her land, and everything else that she has ever known to follow a man who shows he is carrying out the will of the Lord, all because she went out to draw water.  A task she did every day.

It leads me to think about my own life.  How I, too, have been called to live in a city, away from unpopulated land like those found in the country.  And what’s more, I haven’t been called to live in just any city.  I’ve found myself in one of the major urban centers in the world, Los Angeles.  I’m not sure I’ve seen it as such a clear calling from God before.  After all, there are literally millions of people here, likely hundreds of thousands of them Christian.  Why would he call little old me to be here?  I’ve made sense of it more as a series of choices I’ve made leading me to live where I now live.  Yet, I feel something shifting in me, in my spiritual posture, as I take consideration that not only have my choices led me here, but also God has called me to be right where I’m at.  Even as I write these words, I find my entire self, open to the possibilities to this place I live in a new way.  It is slightly different than being present and living well.  It is slightly different than doing good and participating in community.  It is slightly different from prayer and meditating on the word of God.  Instead, it seems like its a posture of waiting for God to show up at the well in the mundane daily tasks, never knowing what’s to come.  I wish I could say this gives me peace, knowing He’s got it worked out.  But, that’s not my response.  Instead, I feel a mix of fear, anticipation and confidence, wondering what the Spirit of God will call me to next.  It seems like a whole new something, beyond my imagination. I pray I have the courage to be ready because it appears very clear in Esther that one can choose to live a life as a Christian, without ever following His calling.  Somehow, that is scarier to me than following Him into the unknown.  I don’t want to live outside of His will, at least most of me doesn’t.  I’m still working on that other part.  The one that keeps looking back, wishing I were back in the country.  The good news, God still accepts me with his abundant grace and love (think prodigal son) AND even Jesus wanted his cup passed from him.  I’m in good company.