"They parted as friends."

Genesis 26.24 That night the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you . . ."

“. . . I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.”

When God gives these words of assurance to Isaac, Abraham’s son, Isaac has just been asked to leave the land of the Philistines, where he’s lived and prospered for many years. But he became so wealthy that the Philistines got jealous. They were forbidden by their king, Abimelech, to hurt Isaac or his wife Rebekah, so they sabotaged them instead by clogging their wells. And finally Abimelech tells Isaac, “Leave. You’ve become far too big for us.”

God comes and gives his word of assurance, a promise of God’s accompaniment, to Isaac in a liminal space, in a time of frightening transition. Not only has Issac just been booted out of a long-time home by the king of the land, but there are a series of personal insults in the following verses. Isaac’s men dig two wells, each claimed by others. So he moves on, finally digging a third well which is undisputed. But it’s not a good beginning. I can imagine Isaac’s growing sense of despair. What will happen to him and his family when they are unwanted, rejected at every turn?

When I was 57, I moved to a new city to flee the rejection and heartache of divorce. I thought it would be a hopeful new beginning, but I hadn’t counted on the grief of leaving a home where I’d lived for so many years. My rental house was a wreck when I arrived—trash piled high in the backyard, the carpet horribly stained, and dead box elder bugs filled the light fixtures. The property management company kept reminding me I signed the lease as is, and my then-realtor pressured me to reduce the price of my home for a quick sale. I felt assaulted from every side.

In Genesis 26, the Philistine king Abimelech eventually comes to seek Isaac out, and asks that they live peaceably. He has the good sense to know God is with Isaac. Isaac prepares a feast, they visit, and when Abimelech leaves, not only have they pledged to be good neighbors, the Bible says, “They parted as friends” (vs. 31).

I don’t know how much time passed between those initial disputes over the wells and this offer of friendship that Abimelech brought. Maybe it wasn’t long. Maybe it was years.

About three weeks after I moved, I learned about a retreat led by two women pastors. They helped arrange for me to join a carpool with two other women for the drive from the city to the mountains. During the ninety-minute drive, we began to share more about ourselves, our faith journeys. I found myself telling them about the heartbreak of my divorce after being married for thirty years; the shitty rental I had pledged a huge chunk of my income to lease; and the realtor I had hired who tried to bully me.

Relief came that day not because my troubles disappeared—that night I got another angry text from my realtor—but because new friendships entered my life. Maybe Isaac felt that way, too. He was still in a new home, still in transition, but he had that heart-is-full feeling that friendship brings.

So often in my life, when I have called on God in difficult times, I wanted God to swoop down and rescue me. I wanted God to take away the difficulties and difficult people I had to confront, but that almost never happened. God did not magically remove the problem. Instead, as I have looked back to those times, I see how God provided what I needed to keep going.

For Isaac, it must have been gratifying knowing that Abimelach had become a friend. For me, those women who listened to my story that day in the car ride and at the retreat, became a base of friendship for me to slowly begin believing in myself again, to move forward into the new life I was creating. We don’t talk a lot about the holiness of friendship, but what if it is God’s way of giving us what we need to move forward? What if the friendship of others is one of the most beautiful ways God comes to us?

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash