Entering the Divine Flow
#Voices of CCLB - Cody Miller
Through the sermon and devotions this week we are reimagining some of the assumptions that generations of believers have made about the life of Rahab. Previous to a conversation with Bill, I too found myself reducing a woman's story to an over-simplistic (and now I see misguided) label!
As I re-read her story from Joshua 2, there was so much I noticed that I skimmed over before in a desire to catalog this story like all the other OT stories I had committed to memory as a good Sunday school boy. For one, she straight-up lies to the king of her country. And it's not like it is a half-truth or a subtle misrepresentation. Rahab is savvy at misdirection and tells, for all intents and purposes, a seemingly God-approved lie (or at least a people of Israel-approved one!) I hope Moses was covering his ears on this one because it gets a bit murky when considering that 9th Commandment. The Old Testament is wild, y'all.
But there is another glaring standout in her story. She takes this massive risk because of the stories she had heard about YHWH. Something in the retelling of YHWH's journey with the people of Israel so moved her that she would take such dramatic and risky action. There was no bible for her to study, no Sunday school for her to grow up in, and no sermons for her to mull over week after week. She was hooked by a story from a people from another place and a god that seemed altogether different from many of the others at her time in history.
The Divine Flow, another way of understanding communion with God, is not constricted to only flow through the confines of our religious texts or our institutional gatherings. The invitation to participate in the life of God is not reserved for "his people" (whoever that may be at this point). We can sense an invitation to join back in through a song we haven't heard in years, when we share space with someone in deep grief or unencumbered joy, when we step outside and actually fill our lungs with breath, or in a song we haven't heard in ages. YHWH is still telling his story and inviting us to join in the narrative.
Will you lean in today and have ears to hear as he calls out to you?