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(Artist Unknown)

I know You are watching me

From the shadow of Your love,

Hoping I will remember You

And our celestial home above.

 

I see You beckoning

For me to rise majestic and tall

But my path is unsteady beneath me

And I seek a soft place to fall.

 

Angels are around me,

They whisper and they mourn

Spreading their wings to catch me

Wanting to take me home.

 

I want to go with them

I am tired and all alone

I yearn to feel the comfort

Of that everlasting home.

 

Yet I don’t know if I am ready,

If I have given my very all,

So I can join You in Your shadow,

The safest place to fall.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

THE PRICE OF RUBIES 5: RUTH

 

(Art: Ruth In the Field of Boaz by Alexandre Cabanel 1868)

This is a beautiful story of loyalty of one woman towards another and the godly path it created….. a story of another ruby above price.

Ruth's story begins in Moab, her home-land, where she married Mahlon, one of the sons of an Israelite couple called Elimelech and Naomi, who had fled from their hometown of Bethlehem because of famine and came to Moab, a gentile country east of the Dead Sea. Another Moabite woman by the name of Orpah married Chilon, the other son of that family. Neither of the women produced any children before the father and both sons died leaving three women destitute.

 

Ruth's story is a prime example of how you can go from nothing to everything if you live a life of loyalty and selflessness. When the famine abated, Naomi, the matriarch, decided to return to Bethlehem and entreated her daughters-in-law to remain in Moab and return to their families. Both of the women wept at the suggestion wanting to follow her but Orpah consented after further encouragement from Naomi while Ruth refused to abandon her aging mother-in-law who faced a life of uncertainty without offspring and opportunity (Ruth 1:15-17). And here begins a life of loyalty.

 

Ruth, a convert, accompanied her mother-in-law to Bethlehem and there gained a reputation of a virtuous woman in Israel. The entire city of Bethlehem knew how good she was and told Naomi that Ruth was better to her than seven sons (Ruth 3:11, 4:15).

 

As the poor in Israel were accustomed to do, Ruth offered to go gleaning the barley fields being harvested. Gleaning was in effect gathering any stalks of barley that fell from the harvesters' hands and that were left on the field for the poor to gather to save them from starvation. Being new in the area, Ruth, unbeknownst to her, chose a field that belonged to Boaz, a wealthy relative of Naomi's husband, but not just any relative. Naomi identified him as the 'next kinsmen’.

 

This is where Ruth’s sense of duty, loyalty and care comes into play. Ruth, a young woman did not seek a man closer to her own age and of her own liking to marry. She instead heeded the counsel of her mother-in-law and approached Boaz to lay claim to a 'levirate marriage'. As the 'next kinsmen' it would be his duty to marry the widowed Ruth and provide her with offspring. This duty would have fallen to her husband's brother had he remained alive.

 

What is even more interesting is that Naomi could have laid this claim herself but Naomi was too stricken in years to bear more children. If Ruth married and had a son, she would provide a way for both women to be cared for in their old age. Lucky for Ruth, Boaz was a good man and was impressed that she was following the Israelite family law in seeking a rightful husband rather than going after her own selfish desires. He regarded her proposal as 'a proof of feminine virtue and modesty by offering herself as a wife to an old man like him rather than going after young men’. (Ruth 3:10,11)

 

Ruth, a converted Gentile, came to Bethlehem empty but was filled in every way. She went from nothing to everything. By chance that she might have a son, she married an old man she didn’t know and they had a son, Obed who was the father of Jesse, who was the father of David, who was the progenitor of Mary, who was the mother of Christ (Ruth 4:17-22).

By giving birth to Obed, Ruth brought honour again to her mother-in-law who was left childless: "And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom and became nurse unto it. And the women, her neighbours, gave it a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi; and they called his name Obed...." (Ruth 4:16,17).

 

Thus by her life's choices Ruth became a symbol of selfless loyalty to be emulated by all the daughters of God……a loyalty that alleviated the suffering of another…..there is no greater.

 

 - CATHRYNE ALLEN 

HIS MORTAL BURDEN

 

He Bears My Burdens by Greg Collins

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 

THE PRICE OF RUBIES 4: HANNAH

 

For This Child I Prayed by Elspeth C. Young

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……

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

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