okieinexile
Well-Known Member
Women at war
Judges 4:1-7
4:1 The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, after Ehud died.
4:2 So the LORD sold them into the hand of King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor; the commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-ha-goiim.
4:3 Then the Israelites cried out to the LORD for help; for he had nine hundred chariots of iron, and had oppressed the Israelites cruelly twenty years.
4:4 At that time Deborah, a prophetess, wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel.
4:5 She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the Israelites came up to her for judgment.
4:6 She sent and summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, "The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you, 'Go, take position at Mount Tabor, bringing ten thousand from the tribe of Naphtali and the tribe of Zebulun.
4:7 I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon with his chariots and his troops; and I will give him into your hand.'"
/***/
My brother sends me messages by e-mail. For the most part these are not things he’s written himself. He serves as a clearing house. People send him things they find amusing, informative, or touching. He makes some sort of a judgment of them and passes them on accordingly.
Every once in a while he sends along one that is mainly pictures. Usually I look at the pictures and delete them, but there was a particular one that touched me so I saved the picture and it will appear as part of my screen-saver now. I see it all the time, and it bothers me every time I see it.
It is a picture of a pair of young ladies in their twenties. They are dressed in fatigues, lying on the ground asleep by each other, and reminding of nothing so much as a couple of girls from my wife Jean’s Girl Scout troop. The difference is they are in Iraq.
I’ve been wondering why this photograph bothers me so.
One of the reasons is I am the father of girls, and it doesn’t take much for me to imagine my daughters in the same situation. That is not something I want. Major Jim Snyder who is involved with the ROTC at Pittsburg State University and is a friend of mine gave me a notepad with ROTC on the front of it. It is part of their recruiting, and I carry it with me wherever I go because the better they are at recruiting, the less likely there is to be a draft, and if they draft again, they will have to draft women too, and I don’t want my daughters to be drafted.
I want to make it clear I support the fine young men and women we have in the armed forces. They are fighting for their country and I respect that. To protect your country is one of the highest callings a person can be called to. For a man, it might even be the highest calling.
But women have a higher calling even than this. Women are carriers of life.
If I say that in the wrong place, I will be ripped to pieces. I don’t think Opolis/Frontenac has been removed from reality so that would be a controversial statement, but you have to be careful.
But there it is; I said it, and if you are hearing me now, then I must still be alive. There is a difference between men and women.
Having referred to the difference between men and women and all that implies, I still have to deal with today’s scripture.
This was during one of those periods when Israel was being oppressed by their pagan neighbors. We can imagine their crops are being stolen, their women are being carried away, and their young men being killed.
During that time, there was a prophetess named Deborah—the only prophetess I recall being referred to—and she had an idea. She had a plan how the oppressors of Israel could be drawn out and crushed in battle, so she sent for Barak, who was a military leader of his people, and told him the plan. To make a long story short, Israel won the battle, and it was because of the woman Deborah.
In this case, a woman went to war, and, apparently, God was okay with it. I am certainly not going to tell you any differently today. God will call whoever He wants to call to do whatever he wants them to do. That is one thing we can draw from this.
What we shouldn’t draw from this is that men and women are the same.
Now I don’t want to get into the Men versus Women thing because, depending upon the yardstick I use, I can’t win. There are more men in prison. More men desert their families. And those are things you don’t want to be number one at.
What I do want to talk about is discovering the reality of the world and dealing with it. For most things the ways for men and women are the same, but there are differences, and those differences should play a part in our thinking.
It would be nice if there were a great big Rulebook of Life that would do for humans like Chilton’s does for automobiles. You could find one for the model you are and flip to the section of it that deals with your problem.
But there’s not, not even the Bible, even though some people would like to use it that way. Barring that, we look to tradition. There are traditional ways we have dealt with “the facts of life.”
But tradition has taken a beating.
I have three daughters. I look at the world they are going into, and there doesn’t seem to be a clear pattern to follow any more. There were things that were givens when I was young that are now choices.
Do you get married or not? Whether you are married or not do you live with some one? If you get pregnant do you get married, do you not get married, or do you even have the baby?
It’s all so very hard, and women in the world today—especially the young women—are at war no less than Deborah was. How are they to choose from among this forest of alternatives?
It is here we can offer a path through this forest. The traditional path is still there and still works even though fewer folks are taking it.
There is nothing new about it, nothing exciting. It is what I would tell my daughters. Find a good man, get married, have kids, and don’t want too much. Love God and the person in front of you. I’d tell sons the same thing, changing what needs to be changed.
In offering this way through the forest, we need to keep in mind we are offering help, and not a guarantee there will never be problems. There will be. We are born into a fallen world.
We also need to keep an eye to the example of Deborah. God had a calling for her that was different than what humans expect, and when God and men disagree, it is God that is right.
Father, grant us the wisdom to follow the callings you give us, grant us the sight to see the path he lays out for us. We ask this in his name, AMEN.
Judges 4:1-7
4:1 The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, after Ehud died.
4:2 So the LORD sold them into the hand of King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor; the commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-ha-goiim.
4:3 Then the Israelites cried out to the LORD for help; for he had nine hundred chariots of iron, and had oppressed the Israelites cruelly twenty years.
4:4 At that time Deborah, a prophetess, wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel.
4:5 She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the Israelites came up to her for judgment.
4:6 She sent and summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, "The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you, 'Go, take position at Mount Tabor, bringing ten thousand from the tribe of Naphtali and the tribe of Zebulun.
4:7 I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon with his chariots and his troops; and I will give him into your hand.'"
/***/
My brother sends me messages by e-mail. For the most part these are not things he’s written himself. He serves as a clearing house. People send him things they find amusing, informative, or touching. He makes some sort of a judgment of them and passes them on accordingly.
Every once in a while he sends along one that is mainly pictures. Usually I look at the pictures and delete them, but there was a particular one that touched me so I saved the picture and it will appear as part of my screen-saver now. I see it all the time, and it bothers me every time I see it.
It is a picture of a pair of young ladies in their twenties. They are dressed in fatigues, lying on the ground asleep by each other, and reminding of nothing so much as a couple of girls from my wife Jean’s Girl Scout troop. The difference is they are in Iraq.
I’ve been wondering why this photograph bothers me so.
One of the reasons is I am the father of girls, and it doesn’t take much for me to imagine my daughters in the same situation. That is not something I want. Major Jim Snyder who is involved with the ROTC at Pittsburg State University and is a friend of mine gave me a notepad with ROTC on the front of it. It is part of their recruiting, and I carry it with me wherever I go because the better they are at recruiting, the less likely there is to be a draft, and if they draft again, they will have to draft women too, and I don’t want my daughters to be drafted.
I want to make it clear I support the fine young men and women we have in the armed forces. They are fighting for their country and I respect that. To protect your country is one of the highest callings a person can be called to. For a man, it might even be the highest calling.
But women have a higher calling even than this. Women are carriers of life.
If I say that in the wrong place, I will be ripped to pieces. I don’t think Opolis/Frontenac has been removed from reality so that would be a controversial statement, but you have to be careful.
But there it is; I said it, and if you are hearing me now, then I must still be alive. There is a difference between men and women.
Having referred to the difference between men and women and all that implies, I still have to deal with today’s scripture.
This was during one of those periods when Israel was being oppressed by their pagan neighbors. We can imagine their crops are being stolen, their women are being carried away, and their young men being killed.
During that time, there was a prophetess named Deborah—the only prophetess I recall being referred to—and she had an idea. She had a plan how the oppressors of Israel could be drawn out and crushed in battle, so she sent for Barak, who was a military leader of his people, and told him the plan. To make a long story short, Israel won the battle, and it was because of the woman Deborah.
In this case, a woman went to war, and, apparently, God was okay with it. I am certainly not going to tell you any differently today. God will call whoever He wants to call to do whatever he wants them to do. That is one thing we can draw from this.
What we shouldn’t draw from this is that men and women are the same.
Now I don’t want to get into the Men versus Women thing because, depending upon the yardstick I use, I can’t win. There are more men in prison. More men desert their families. And those are things you don’t want to be number one at.
What I do want to talk about is discovering the reality of the world and dealing with it. For most things the ways for men and women are the same, but there are differences, and those differences should play a part in our thinking.
It would be nice if there were a great big Rulebook of Life that would do for humans like Chilton’s does for automobiles. You could find one for the model you are and flip to the section of it that deals with your problem.
But there’s not, not even the Bible, even though some people would like to use it that way. Barring that, we look to tradition. There are traditional ways we have dealt with “the facts of life.”
But tradition has taken a beating.
I have three daughters. I look at the world they are going into, and there doesn’t seem to be a clear pattern to follow any more. There were things that were givens when I was young that are now choices.
Do you get married or not? Whether you are married or not do you live with some one? If you get pregnant do you get married, do you not get married, or do you even have the baby?
It’s all so very hard, and women in the world today—especially the young women—are at war no less than Deborah was. How are they to choose from among this forest of alternatives?
It is here we can offer a path through this forest. The traditional path is still there and still works even though fewer folks are taking it.
There is nothing new about it, nothing exciting. It is what I would tell my daughters. Find a good man, get married, have kids, and don’t want too much. Love God and the person in front of you. I’d tell sons the same thing, changing what needs to be changed.
In offering this way through the forest, we need to keep in mind we are offering help, and not a guarantee there will never be problems. There will be. We are born into a fallen world.
We also need to keep an eye to the example of Deborah. God had a calling for her that was different than what humans expect, and when God and men disagree, it is God that is right.
Father, grant us the wisdom to follow the callings you give us, grant us the sight to see the path he lays out for us. We ask this in his name, AMEN.