A Well. A Tree. A Tomb.

Been thinking about Abraham the past couple days….

God called Abraham to leave all He knew for the unfamiliar…to go to a land He would show Him….land that one day God would give to his descendants…land that for now wasn’t his…to descendants who would come from his wife…the same wife who couldn’t get pregnant and now was laughably old. But God was up to something far-reaching that Abraham could only know by faith. It seemed so unreal sometimes, it ached…Throughout the later part of his life, God let the burden of the vision and the waiting weigh heavy on him. But God was faithful in the waiting. In time God did give him a miracle son.

But in his lifetime, Abraham didn’t receive the full promise of land & the blessing. He welcomed it from a distance. What stuck out to me yesterday was that while he remained a sojourner in the land of the Philistines, God did give him a piece of it.

A well. A tree. A tomb.

Abraham dug a well, sealed the ownership with a covenant, and planted an evergreen tree in this foreign soil. And in that spot, he called out to the everlasting God who owned it all. Little did he know the testing he would soon endure when God required & gave back his son…and later when he purchased a tomb to lay his wife to rest.

But that day when what he owned of the promise was below the surface & all was uncertain, he called out to the One who brought Him to this point. He set His mind to the Everlasting One, the One whose Word went deeper than the tree and well and eventually the tomb. And He worshipped.

I sat with that thought yesterday & today. Before God brings us to places which test every fiber of our intimacy & devotion to Him, He often has us dig a well, plant a tree & worship Him there. We dig beneath the surface in rocky foreign ground, dig into our questions, fears, doubt, and desires, dig because He called us, dig because others are depending on us, dig in His Word….dig until we see the Well He provided and call out to Him. We drink deep of the only One who satisfies, the One who made the promise, the everlasting One who never runs dry and keeps His word. We all dig holes. But only God makes the hole a well springing up to life in Him.

Beside that living Well, we plant in hope, the life He gave us…the life that by His grace will bring blessing and shade for a generation to come. And in that spot, we worship Him. We don’t plant an idol near such an altar. We clear it all that we can know Him first, the One who brought us this far.

Maybe all this time that God has been leading us by faith in this strange land, He has been digging below the surface and planting something for the display of His splendor for generations to come. Maybe that’s what a well, a tree, and an empty tomb were meant to display as we own a piece of what’s more to come…and pour out.

And for this moment, standing by the tree & the well, we can stop and worship Him who is from everlasting….even in the land of our sojourning.

Faith to faith.