Today, the entries usher in the high point of this particular little journal. Although positioned a little late in the text for a "proper" story-climax (only a couple of entries remain in this volume) it is nevertheless well-positioned. It is the link into journal volume number two.
Feb. 18, 2005
I'm re-reading the Gospels, starting with Matthew, and something hit me: timing matters...a lot, or maybe sequence. The "time for every purpose under heaven." I look at Christ's death and think, if the act of dying itself were the point, Jesus could have died when Herod went on the rampage, when He was just a babe. But simply dying wasn't all He was about. So the angel warned his parents to take flight into Egypt with the Child. Later in His life, when a proper time for submission to death was presented to Him, the angel came again, but came only to support Him before death and not to provide another flight by night.
This makes a good example for me to follow: rashly dying to self--if it happens before we are prepared, before we are positioned to do it as an act of submission and obedience--doesn't serve God's best purpose. But if it happens aright, it beautifully restates the "redemption of mankind for the Kingdom of God" and glorifies and re-affirms Christ's work on the Cross. I think it is time that I make a study of submission. Lately, I've run studies on suffering and holiness and most recently faith; but now I feel drawn to a submission study.
Feb. 28,2005 (God's response to my Jan. 9 cry)
Over the past month or so, God has been good to answer my question about my own ministry--particularly where I presented my confusion about the limitations of my gender.
Ever since that Jan 9 plea, God has been leading me toward accepting His particular call on me--His reason for making me. When I would ask, "What do you want from me?" He would whisper back, "The secret is in your name..."
Being a prophetess. He's shown me how I've been functioning in a sort of apprenticeship to that role for quite some time, working with both individuals and groups as an often reluctant leader. I've been interim director, helping church choirs through difficult and painful transitions; I've birthed new ministries like the coffee house worship chapel at St. L.
I've noticed a theme in my leadership call: to walk people through blind and difficult change. But today...as I read my Bible I feel the call confirmed in an even larger way. So, I turned to the book of Judges and read Deborah's story all over again. I see where she fulfilled her call: not at a church pulpit. Not within the curtains of the tabernacle. She served under a palm tree. Nowhere are there scriptural restrictions against that!
And, not only was she a prophetess, she was also a judge. I read about her and about Jael. Those goosebumps of crystal clarity--that sudden focus of a fuzzy lens--they struck me. So exciting when that happens! God placed Deborah and Jael just so, placed them as a sign among the people that HE was the one in charge!
Pagan powers (Canaanites) were in coalition and were oppressing God's people. These oppressors were equipped with the most sophisticated weaponry of their day (iron chariots) and because God's people had done evil, they were given over into the hands of these oppressors...for 20 years.
Then, God raised up Deborah, a woman to judge and to prophesy. A woman to lead and give encouragement where many quaked and doubted the strength and courage at their disposal.
He raised up Jael, a woman to conquer.
To His spiritually parched people, God proved Himself by ascribing victory to these two women, a hesitant military leader--Barak, and a small army--only 10,000 strong. With these few, God conquered a mighty coalition.
I am reminded of the verses about the foolishness/weakness of God being so much greater than the wisdom and strength of men. So many churches now focus on our God as the God of Love, and this is a good thing, but He has other attributes to glorify. These same churches often harshly rebuke any leadership but that which is found in their own ranks of influential community men. Not only do they not visit their Deborahs, they don't call their Davids in from the field. Have they considered these things? Have they lost sight of God's own freedom when they strategize about power and freedom? Do they acknowledge that God might--indeed has called a woman to prophecy, a woman to conquer? Do they acknowledge that the God they'd like to see as tepid (and why might that be?)has His own Battle Cry that He might raise in its proper day, and without their counsel?
In the cosmic battle, here I see like a chess game between God and Satan, how particularly rich it is when God decides to take out the opponent's queen with nothing but a little pawn. In such a move, it is the chess master alone who gets all the glory, the pawn is still just a pawn. There isn't even a shred of built-in power in the pawn, as there is in say a knight or a bishop. So God is the author of all knowledge and power, and sometimes He uses the frail to drive that point home. But what of the community of chess pieces? Can the knight or the bishop allow that dignity--the honor of making the winning play--go to a lesser piece? It's a mystery.
Is there any place where God can raise up a Deborah today?
Later in the back of this volume of the journal series, where I put things I called "appendix-ish" material, I added this note:
"Another reference about the increase of the role of women in certain eras: Isaiah 32. The first 8 verses establish a picture of a society such as Deborah's--such as our own. But God does not fill the gap between picturing this depraved society and the age of peace with a call to arms for His warrior men. No, here, particularly starting in vs. 9, God calls the women to a higher mission. They are told to rise up, scrap their finery, dress in mourning, don the clothing of their poor neighbors--basically they are called to identify with the suffering ones, to prepare themselves to comfort the mourners.
After the in-between days when the women embrace sobriety, when the places of power and industry are laid low, THEN the work of righteousness will be peace "and people will dwell in a sure dwellings and quiet resting places." So different from the warfare plans we tend to poke in that open place.
That shift I saw as my "first" true prophetic observation: it is happening, but there is still much to do.
Right now, many women continue as ones preoccupied with things that diminish their God-ordained strength--the strength to set aside easy finery and self-focused comfort, to take up sackcloth and ashes alongside their neighbors, to walk in the strength of true compassion.
But God will not leave this stasis to last for long. Only He is changeless. We are ever moving--and through our movement highlight His stability, the one whose immutability we orbit.
Once before, He regarded the low estate of His handmaiden. Through Isaiah He ordained it to be so again...this time for a generation of handmaidens.
In the words of our model, Mary: Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word...
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