Beer Lahai Roi

When Genesis tells us where Isaac settled after the death of his father, Abraham, it doesn't tell us the significance. It just names the place. It trusts that its original reader both had a sense of the geography of the area and also had not forgotten what they had just read a few chapters before. 

But we...we are a people who are prone to think that the biblical language is a foreign language, so we skip over all the words that don't sound English. And those are place names. And the human names. And the names of God. And...the important stuff. 

Remember, part of the big promise God made to His people in the Old Testament was a promise of place. It was a promise to bring them back to Canaan, to the Promised Land, and to make them as numerous as the sands on the shores right there. It was to kick out all of the other peoples and make that place home for them. 

So when the Bible names places, those places are part of the promise. 

So it is with Beer Lahai Roi. 

Picture it: you're the promised son of a very old man to whom God made a lot of promises. You probably have spent your whole life hearing about the promises that God made to your dad, and about how you were one of them, but maybe your life isn't at a place yet where you understand what that means for you - maybe you're still young, at least comparatively; trying to establish yourself; looking for your place in the world. And then, your dad dies. You're the promise, but what happens to the promise? Where does it go from here? 

Then, you pick up your young little family and start moving...because that's what you do. You're a bit of a nomad, a shepherd kind of a person with lots of flocks and herds to care for, so moving is just par for the course. So you come to this place, and you settle, and you find out this place is the place. The one you heard about from your cousin, when things looked most desperate. You ask around a little bit to confirm, and this is really it. 

Beer Lahai Roi. 

The well of the God who sees me.

Were you headed this way on purpose? Did you even know? 

We don't know whether Isaac knew this is where he was going, whether he turned toward this place on purpose. We don't know how much of Hagar and Ishmael's connection to here that he knew. We don't know if he and Abraham had been by this well before, if his dad had told him anything about it. Maybe when he arrived, the townsfolk did. You know, the other shepherds who came to water their flocks here. 

However it ended up this way, what a place to settle at a moment in your life that feels, for most of us, most uncertain. The death of a parent is hard. The death of a parent who carried so much promise, such a heavy weight of the burden of God on him...that's got to be harder. To have heard your whole life about how much of the promise runs through you, whether you understand that or not...it's rough. What a heavy weight. 

And then, God brings you here. To this place. This place that is so deeply connected to your own story and at the same time, not so much and yet, its very name is exactly what you need. This well, this specific well, waters your parched soul more than it ever does your flocks. 

The well of the God who sees me. 

Just when you most need to be seen. 

How cool is that?