A Prostitute's Witness

While it is true that the Biblical story is more about the men of Israel's history, it is also true that there are also some strong women who stand astride those stories as well.  In the book of Genesis there is Sarah, Hagar,  Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel.  Though shadowed by the partriarachs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they lived out no small role in the plan of God.  Early in the book of Joshua we encounter still another, a prostitute named Rahab.  She was a protector and deliverer of two spies sent by Joshua into the city of Jericho and then saved from the city's destruction to marry a Hebew man named Salmon with whom she had a son named Boaz; thus, becoming a part of the lineage of Jesus through his earthly father, Joseph.    

It is a kind of spiritual rags to riches story.  A woman who was a pagan Cannanite becomes an ancestor to the man who cared for and raised the Son of God who would be born into the world centuries later.    To read her story is to be convinced that God has a plan that is full of surprises.  Anyone writing the story God has written through human history would not include a woman like Rahab.  Of course, many of us know that God calls and uses the unlikely ones through personal experience.  Most of us look at our life and are filled with amazement that God would have a use for us in the His Kingdom's work, but surprisingly enough He does.  

And it is not the great names like Spurgeon or Mother Teresa that He uses, but ordinary folks like you and me.  When God needed for some invisible soul to hear a kind word today, He did not make use of some celebrity saint.  Instead, He sent an ordinary soul like you and me.  Anyone of us can look back over our day and see where God used us for some Kingdom work.  It only takes a moment of pondering and then all of a sudden, there it is.  When God left us the story of Rabab, He left a witness that everyone of us can be useful to Him if we simply choose the way of affirming Him and living in obedience.