July 4, 2025 // Friday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time 

Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Genesis 23:1-4, 19; 24:1-8, 62-67

Reflect on the Word // 

All of my belongings fit into a suitcase and the couple cardboard boxes we’d sent ahead. After the college graduation ceremonies, I packed my cap and gown, hugged my parents, family, and friends goodbye and flew out to Phoenix to begin a new life.  

Before I knew it, I was a wife, a homeowner, a mom, and a desert dweller. I loved discovering my new “homeland”—and myself—as I grew into all my roles. But a couple years in, I realized something was off. I felt listless and a heaviness seemed to descend.  With so much to rejoice in, why was I sad?

I realize now, decades later, that I had not adequately processed such a massive life change. Even good changes are goodbyes to places and people and ways of life, and these farewells rock us in ways we were never originally meant to be rocked. Remember, in Eden there would have been no goodbyes. No flights out. No packing and leaving. 

Over time, I regained my equilibrium and rediscovered joy. But I have a deep appreciation for what the Old Testament women, like Rebekah in today’s First Reading, suffered as they said goodbye to the only life they’d known. Abraham tells his servant that God “will send his messenger before you, and you will obtain a wife for my son there” (Genesis 24:7).

Rebekah was not forced to go. She was prepared and asked. She made a free choice for Isaac, for God, for a future for countless others, and left with her family’s blessing. But no doubt she had her misgivings and tender moments of mourning the girlhood she could never go back to. 

Sister, you too have known changes and goodbyes. You have made courageous moves into unknown territories where only the single step ahead was illuminated. Or maybe you set forth into a new career, a new school, a new home, or a new friendship in only darkness.

Yet God sent a messenger before you. His providence was present before you even arrived. And His promises never left you. Your future, too, is full of blessings as countless as the stars. 

Relate to the Lord // Where do you see the Lord’s presence and providence in your life’s transitions, now and in the past?