SPEAK TO ME SOFTLY

 

What Manner of Man Is This by Greg Collins

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 

THE PRICE OF RUBIES 3: REBEKAH

 

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)

CONSUMING LOVE

Living Water by LDS Bookstore

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 

 

THE PRICE OF RUBIES 2: SARAH

 

Is Anything Too Hard For The Lord by Elspeth C. Young

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 

RETURN TO HEAVEN

Welcome Home by Danny Hahlbohm

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

THE PRICE OF RUBIES 1: EVE

 

Eve by Rose Datoc Dall

Proverbs 31:10-12: Who can find a virtuous woman for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.

Proverbs 31: 25-31: Strength and honour are her clothing…she openeth her mouth in wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness…..her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her….favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman who reveres the Lord, she shall be praised.

The ‘prince of this world’, the adversary of all that is good, is seeking to dull our inherent spiritual natures that we as women are born with by using the world and its ideals to weaken and eliminate our influence to the great detriment of our families and the society at large.  He does this by devaluing marriage and motherhood; reinforcing the lie that a woman’s sexuality is what defines her worth; erasing of differences between the masculine and the feminine and even convincing us that we don’t know what a woman is.

Women today are encouraged to be more aggressive, tough and confrontational yet the Father made us gentle, kind, tender and loving.  Nurturing our spiritual selves and putting aside the values of this world will ensure that we sharpen these attributes and become powerful enough to lift others to higher ground; this means our children, our spouses, our extended families, our friends, our co-workers, our communities.  When we know who we are and don't allow the world to confuse us, we are being single minded, in other words, we are being at one with God who made us.

In today’s world where women who murder their children are hailed as heroes, I want to celebrate women whose womanhood exceeds the price of rubies. These are women of God whose example endures forever. These are women who will get a seat in the kingdom of God because of the goodness within them. What price would you put to the value, contribution and example of these women:

·         The suffering of Eve

·         The sacrifice of Sarah

·         The courage of Esther

·         The devotion of Hannah

·         The loyalty of Ruth

·         The motherly protection of Elisabeth

·         The submission of Mary

I will start with the suffering of Mother Eve. The woman who had no luxuries to retreat to, no appliances to make her life easier, no girlfriends who understood her difficulties and offered support, the woman who only had a willingness to start from scratch. Not only did Eve’s spiritual acumen lead her and her husband to leave the Garden of Eden and initiate the Plan of Salvation, but the courage to enter the world of suffering is beyond admiration….and suffer she did…..

A woman with much insight into Mother Eve by the name of Arta Romney Ballif paid this poetic homage to her who was the first woman to know sorrow:

God said, “BE FRUITFUL, AND MULTIPLY”

And God said, “I WILL GREATLY MULTIPLY THY SORROW”

Thy sorrow, sorrow, sorrow –

I have gotten a man from the Lord

I have traded the fruit of the garden for fruit of my body

For a laughing bundle of humanity.

 

Adam, where are the boys?

Where is Abel?

He is long caring for his flocks.

Are the ewes lambing in this storm?

 

Why your troubled face, Adam? Are you ill?

Why so pale, so agitated?

Dead?  What is dead?  Merciful God!

 

I am trying to understand.

You said, “Abel is dead.”

But I am skilled with herbs….

Herbs will not heal?  Dead?

 

And Cain? Where is Cain?

Listen to that thunder.

Cain cursed?

God said, “A fugitive and a vagabond?”

But God can’t do that.

They are my sons, too.

I gave them birth in the valley of pain.

 

This is his home

This the soil he loved

Where he toiled for golden wheat

For tasselled corn.

 

To the hill country?

Quick, we must find him

I worry, thinking of him wandering

With no place to lay his head.

Cain cursed? A wanderer, a roamer?

 

Abel, my son dead?

And Cain, my son, a fugitive?

Two sons Adam, we had two sons

Both – oh, Adam – multiply sorrow.

 

Dear God, why?

Tell me again about the fruit.

Please tell me again, why?

 

-          Arta Romney Ballif

I weep for Mother Eve and all she experienced, endured and suffered. This, my friends, is a ruby far above price…..

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

RELEASE

 

Bid Me Come Unto Thee by Eva Koleva Timothy

Lift up your aching heart

And seek your release in me.

I am the sacrifice that was paid

For your years of pain to cease.

 

My mercy shall spill from Me

And erase every tear

You have wept seeking peace.

Come unto me,

In me you will find release.

 

-      Cathryne Allen