There’s an important difference between giving up and letting go.
~ Jessica Hatchigan
And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The LORD blessed him, and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him. (Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father.) And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.” .. So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there. And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham. And he gave them the names that his father had given them. But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the name of the well Esek, because they contended with him. Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that also, so he called its name Sitnah. And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, saying, “For now the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.” … From there he went up to Beersheba. And the LORD appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.” So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the LORD and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac’s servants dug a well.
~ Isaac, the son of laughter, in Genesis 26
Oh beloved, it is true.
Each of us will have a time (or many) in our lives where we will have honestly given our best to something. We will have followed His lead into situations where we knew that we were going to make a difference. The problem is not in our willingness to go into a new situation, the problem is often in knowing when it is time to move on.
Oh, many of us knew how to run away. We knew how to give up on our responsibilities to family. We knew how to make excuses for our behavior. And this is why learning the lesson of letting go is difficult for many of us formerly lost boys from The Colony.
So, the question is, for each of us how do we know when to go? And, do we know HOW to go (other than our former just “running away”). Isaac gives us a bunch of insights into how this an work in our lives.
First, Isaac listen to the people who had trouble with him. He heard their request.
Then, Isaac moved on in a peaceful manner. He did not fight or gripe about his rights.
Beyond this, he left with the proper equipment and people to be ready to resettle and get moving again with his (and his family’s) life.
Easy, right? No, of course not. Nothing went according to plan.
Can we see it?
There is something here that Isaac can truly teach us. Isaac remained committed to doing what he needed to do for his flocks and family. And, he also understood that this may require the extreme extra effort of disengaging from people who were not willing to get along with him.
But, he did it peacefully. He was being harassed by a wide range of people, but Isaac chose to simply move on, and spend his energy taking care of what he needed to do.
When we grasp this, we can see something incredibly powerful here. Isaac wasted no effort on things that were simply going to drag him into unnecessary drama or conflict. He was totally committed to doing what he needed to do, but none of that included doing things that were going to get people hurt.
So, our lives are going to have plenty of things like this. We are going to face rejection and pressure. However, we don’t have to handle these things like we handled them in the past. We don’t have to run away. Nor, do we have to stay and get into a fight that is going to help no one.
We can, like Isaac, reframe the rejection, and simply move on to a place where we can dig a new well and take care of those we have been called to provide for. So, are you getting rejected? It happens. But how we respond is incredibly important.
Tonight is your night. Time to learn how to seek peace and dig a new well.
For the Christian, this second journey usually occurs between the ages of thirty and sixty and is often accompanied by a second call from the Lord Jesus. The second call invites us to serious reflection on the nature and quality of our faith in the gospel of grace, our hope in the new and not yet, and our love for God and people. The second call is a summons to a deeper, more mature commitment of faith where the naiveté, first fervor, and untested idealism of the morning and the first commitment have been seasoned with pain, rejection, failure, loneliness, and self-knowledge.
~Brennan Manning
