Hallmark movies.  Have you seen them?  Well, I can tell you the story line of every.single.one!  It will be a story of a man and woman who shouldn’t ever be together that suddenly find their lives intertwined in a unique way.  They wrestle with the reality of their feelings toward the other until one finally shares their heart, the other reciprocates, and they kiss…forever living happily ever after.  In essence, it is the fairytale stories turned modern!  Don’t get me wrong, I love these stories.  They are hopeful, cute and based on a romanticized view of falling in love.

For Isaac, his Hallmark fairytale is, well, not so much what we would dream of.  Read Genesis 24:1-51 (a bit long but worth the read!).  Is this the Bible’s version of a hallmark movie with the assorted cast of camels and servants, a father so quick to give his daughter away (dowry exchange), and a young man who is to marry a stranger?

Yet, this is the story. Remarkably removed from our modern notions of finding ‘The One,’ Isaac has little say in what will be.  His father orchestrates, through a servant, the finding of ‘The One.’  Prayers are lifted, water is gathered, beauty is seen, exchange is made, and they lived happily ever after. It reads,

⁶⁴ And Rebekah looked up, and when she saw Isaac, she slipped quickly from the camel, ⁶⁵ and said to the servant, “Who is the man over there, walking in the field to meet us?” The servant said, “It is my master.” So she took her veil and covered herself. ⁶⁶ And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. ⁶⁷ Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her.