I was tempted my burdens
To lay to Your charge;
I considered them acutely unfair.
Then you opened my heart
And showed me Your godly task,
Beyond human capacity to bear.
Knowing where you had gone
I would never have to go,
I sorrowed and sought
My arrogance to bury;
In humility I assent,
Your mortal burden,
So valiant, so holy,
I would never in this life
Have to carry.
-
CATHRYNE ALLEN
One of the great women of the Old Testament who stands out for her
devotion to God is Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel.
Not being able to bear children is a difficult cross to bear for many
women in any age but it was especially so for Hannah. She was barren in a time
when ‘it was a great reproach to a woman among the Jews’ (Clarke, Bible
Commentary, 2:207). So many women must have suffered a sense of
worthlessness at such a time because of this trial. No fertility treatments, no
IVF….
It was considered a woman brought great honour to her husband by
giving him children, especially sons. At an age when women had little else by
which to distinguish themselves, child bearing was of utmost importance.
Hannah's suffering from her condition was made even more difficult by the
second wife of her husband, Peninnah, who tormented her and made her miserable
by 'ostentatious exhibition of her children' because Hannah was favoured by
their husband (Old Testament Student Manual Book 1, p 267). So many questions
about this situation but we won’t go there…..
As the family went up to Shiloh to the annual festival to offer
sacrifices at the tabernacle, Hannah took matters into her own hands. She knew
there was only one place to go and only one God who could possibly know the
state of her heart and who could alleviate her suffering. In her unwavering
faith she made a covenant with the Lord that if He would give her a son she
would bring him up as a Nazarite and dedicate the child to God’s service for
the duration of his life (1 Sam 1:11).
This was an amazing act of selflessness. That she was a woman with
great faith and love for God is clearly seen by her praise of Him following
Samuel’s birth (1 Sam 2:1-10).
Hannah did bear a son and she called his name Samuel, meaning in
Hebrew 'heard of God' (Keil and Delitzch, Commentary, 2:2:25). This name served
as a reminder to both Hannah and Samuel of the special circumstances and
commitments relating to his birth (Old Testament Student Manual Book 1, p.
268).
When Samuel was weaned at 3 years of age as was the custom, Hannah
honoured her promise to God and brought him to the priest Eli to live and serve
in the sanctuary for the remainder of his life. One cannot imagine how Hannah,
who longed for a child, had the fortitude to hand him over to live with an old
man and replace the carefree days of his childhood with service in the
tabernacle, seeing him only once a year (1 Sam 2:20). But she had cause for
another concern. Eli was not only an old man but he had failed in his parental
responsibilities with his two sons who caused all of Israel to sin because of
their immorality and bad example as priests (1 Sam 2:13-36).
So bad was the situation that ‘a man of God’ was sent to Eli to
pronounce the Lord’s curse upon his house because he took no action to correct
the abomination in his family and the tabernacle. It seemed by this failure
that Eli honoured his sons above the Lord (2:27,29). This is in stark contrast
to Hannah who had only 3 years with Samuel and trained him to honour and serve
God as a child better than the adults around him (1 Sam 2:18).
The God of Israel knew how Hannah would feel giving up her son
into someone else’s care and He did not leave her heart empty. He filled it to
the brim and rewarded her for keeping her word. Hannah went on to bear three
more sons and two daughters. What does this tell us about the God we worship? No
sacrifice we offer is overlooked by Him….
I had a memory from my pre-earth life once. I was sitting with the
Saviour and He was saying to me: “I will save you and I will make up for
everything.” Indeed……
Speak
to me softly
What
you would have me hear;
Speak
to me gently
In
my willing ear.
Leave
nothing unsaid
Kind,
good and everlastingly true;
Speak
to me softly
And
reveal the splendour of You.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
After I
wrote about Sarah yesterday, I realized I had to write about Rebekah, who
followed in her sacrificial footsteps and made the Abrahamic covenant a reality
through her marriage to Isaac.
No union of
two people had a more romantic beginning than the union of Isaac and Rebekah.
Isaac was
forty years old and Rebekah was a ‘damsel’ most likely in her teens (Genesis
25:20). There was a whole generation between them. Isaac’s mother Sarah was the
sister of Rebekah’s grandmother Milcah. This would make Rebekah half of Isaac’s
age, if not younger.
He was well-established
and rich, a man of God and the heir of the priesthood and the covenant which
would make him the progenitor of all the faithful. She was a righteous, young
beautiful virgin and everything Abraham desired for his son’s wife (Genesis
24:16)…like Sarah….and she was destined to become ‘a mother of nations’…..like
Sarah.
The
marriage of Isaac and Rebekah was born out of the covenant between Abraham and
his eldest servant whom he commissioned to travel back to his kindred in
Mesopotamia to procure a wife from his covenant family for his beloved son. Abraham,
who sought the blessings of the fathers and the priesthood could see that Isaac
could not for that reason marry a Canaanite. (Genesis 24:3-4; Abraham 1:1-4; 21-27).
I will not
recount here how successful the servant was in meeting Rebekah and her family
through the obvious spiritually engineered process. The amazing thing is that
Rebekah agreed to leave the security of her family and travel to a land she has
never been to, to marry a much older man she has never seen.
Picture a
man out in the field at the eventide spotting a caravan of camels approaching. A
young girl he has never before seen, wearing a vail across her face, alights
and is introduced as his wife. All Genesis records is that Isaac ‘brought her
into his mother’s tent, made her his wife and loved her’ (Genesis 24:67). You
can just feel the cupid’s bow, can’t you???
I am amazed
how men used to conquer the frontiers of this earth and women carved dynasties
by the children they bore.
The heathen
land of Canaan that Isaac and Rebekah lived in was not a paradise but it was
the promised land for their posterity and they embraced it with trust and
faith. Abraham passed on an estate of great wealth to Isaac which gave him a
position of influence and prestige in the land but here is the sting… Life is
not smooth sailing even for the most noble and chosen……
Like Sarah
who waited 25 years for Isaac, Rebekah waited 20 years to become a mother. Genesis
records that Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah and 60 years old
when she had Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25:20,26). What went through their minds
for those 20 years, no doubt knowing the promises, would have tested them to
the limit….
We are told
that Isaac ‘intreated’ the Lord so that Rebekah could conceive (Genesis 25:21).
The dictionary defines this word as: ask earnestly, beseech, implore, BEG….
The faith
and trust paid of. Through one of the children Rebekah bore were all the
promises realized. Her spiritual acumen ensured the fulfilment of such as she acted
upon the revelation she received whilst pregnant with her twins that Jacob, the
younger of the two, would be the heir (Genesis 25:22,23). As Esau, who ‘despised’
his birthright, sold it to Jacob for a mass of pottage (vs 29-34), Rebekah
ensured the rights of the priesthood went Jacob, the next patriarch, who became
Israel (Genesis 27). Jacob’s 12 sons became the Tribes of Israel which roam
this earth to this day….through which all the nations of the earth will be
blessed.
Not as much
is known about Rebekah, except that she too, like Sarah, was spiritually in
tune enough to leave her family and follow a strange man into a strange country
to marry a 40 year old man she had never seen before to become a mother of
nations.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Art: Isaac and Rebekah by Unknown Artist)
.jpg)
I followed all Your footsteps
And I sacrificed everything.
I did Your bidding no matter
What You asked of me.
I trusted, I had faith, I endured
All the pain that was given me.
I kept my love burning like a flame
Until I came to see the reality:
It is not my love for Thee
but Yours for me
That is consuming me.
-
Cathryne
Allen
I
am always astounded by the sacrifices that the women of the past had to make.
We, the women of today know little of sacrifice in comparison. The freedoms and
privileges we enjoy today are unprecedented.
Sarah,
the wife of Abraham, is a woman who knew sacrifice. All the historical sources
attest that she was a close relative –
perhaps a half-sister (the daughter of Abraham’s father through another wife
(Genesis 20:12).
“It is
said that her spiritual attainments matched and in some cases exceeded those of
her remarkable husband, she being gifted with profound “intuitive perception”
of spiritual realities. She had a deep love and compassion for the needy….she
was not merely a strong personality in her own right, but as Abraham’s spouse,
was “an important balancing factor in his life.
“Abraham
and Sarah were not just ‘a married couple’ but a team, two people working in
harmony”, as seen in the Genesis portrayal “of the two as one unit” and “as
equals” – as partners, working together for the same goals, walking together
along the same path, united in thought, word and deed. Or, as told by Philo,
“Everywhere and always she was at his side…his true partner in life and life’s
events, resolved to share alike the good and the ill” and “she was the darling
of his heart” (On Abraham, in Philo VI, 121; E. Douglas Clark, The Blessings
of Abraham, Becoming a Zion People, 59, 60)
Sarah was
the epitome of a “virtuous woman” whose worth was far above rubies (Proverbs
31:10). Her husband trusted her, she was an industrious homemaker, a tireless
worker, and generous to the poor, she spoke wisdom and kindness, was cheerful
and hopeful about the future, and was clothed with strength and splendour, an
ideal wife, worthy of her husband’s highest praise (ibid p 60).
Sarah was
the wife of the covenant and honoured by God for her righteousness. She left
the goodly land of Haran and followed Abraham into the famine-stricken place of
Canaan without complaining and believed wholeheartedly in all her husband’s
revelations including the promise of posterity even when she continued
childless.
“Her love
for her husband was too great, her commitment to her covenants too strong, her
faith in the Almighty too unyielding, to allow her to criticize or complain. In
the words of the learned Muslim sholar al-Tabai, Sarah “was one of the best
human beings that ever existed”. She would not disobey Abraham in any way, for
which God honoured her.” (The Blessings of Abraham, Becoming a Zion People, 107)
This is
the sacrifice of Sarah. According to Bible scholars and modern-day revelation
(D&C 132:34), it was the law for a woman who could not provide children for
her husband after ten years of marriage, to give him another wife to ensure
continuation of his family line. Sarah decided that Abraham's next wife would
be Hagar, a beautiful Egyptian girl who was one of Pharoah’s daughters, given
to Sarah as a servant (Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1:223, Dead Sea
Scrolls)
Even
though in her heart of hearts she still held onto hope that she would one day
conceive, Sarah obeyed the law that seemed to by-pass her in the posterity
promise. Bear in mind she was 76 years old by this time, Abraham was 86 and
Hagar was a maiden who fell pregnant straight away (Genesis 16:16). How would
you as a wife feel???
According
to a modern Muslim scholar, it was because of this unselfish act of Sarah that
God would eventually reward her with a son of her own (Moyers, Genesis, 193).
A favorable sentiment but one that is superseded by Sarah’s undeniable faith in
God and her understanding that the heir of the covenant had to come through a
legally recognised wife. In other words, she held onto the belief that she
would be the mother of the heir.
This also
was the sacrifice of Sarah. Sarah, who languished until her old age, in
obedience, waiting for her promises to be fulfilled, became a mother of
nations, and ‘kings of people came of her’ (Genesis 17:16) but not before she
paved the way of belief that if God can cause an old, barren woman to conceive,
He can also make a young, virgin girl to do so and bear a Son of God. And so
Sarah waited 25 years for the fulfilment of God’s promise to pave such a way
(Genesis 12:1-3,4; 21:5).
“As
stated in the New Testament, the blessing of Isaac came on the strength not
only of Abraham’s faith – “who against hope believed in hope” (Romans 4:18) –
but also of Sarah’s, who “through faith…herself received strength to conceive
seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged
him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11:11)” (E. Douglas Clark, The
Blessings of Abraham, Becoming a Zion People, 178)
Such was
Sarah, a woman who would sacrifice everything of herself to be a witness that
God fulfils His promises.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
Will
I be lost in crowds of heaven
When
my mortal shell at last I leave,
And
will this earthly life appear unreal
When
my true home is to me revealed?
Will
I come to see Thy face
I
so often sought on bended knee,
And
forget all the lonely moments
I
suffered with merciful help from Thee?
My
heart will rend within my chest
When
I kneel before Thy throne;
I
will weep with grateful heart
For
cherished truths that I have known.
-
CATHRYNE ALLEN
