Maybe that’s overly dramatic, but you probably know what I
mean.
Christ hasn't gone anywhere, of course, and what you have to
do is ride it out. Keep praying, and ignore the sense of vertigo you feel when
it seems like your circumstances are spiraling out of control. And, of course, continue
to read your Bible.
You never know when a very familiar, or seemingly dull,
portion of holy Scripture may be just the encouragement you need. This week,
for example, the Lord helped me through a genealogy. Usually you think of long
lists of names – So-and-So begat Such-and-Such – as the boring verses you skip
to get to the action parts of the Bible.
But when I read Matthew 1, one of the two genealogies of our
Lord Jesus, what caught my attention were the four women (not counting Mary): Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah.
If God were ever intent on getting things right, it would be
in planning the birth of His Son into the human family. If there is any place
where there would no margin for error, it would be in designing the ancestral
line of the Messiah.
But the stories of these four women don’t seem to bear that
out at all.
Remember Tamar? The details are in Genesis 38, but here’s a
summary. She married the patriarch Judah’s first-born son, a man so wicked that
the Lord put him to death. Then she married Judah’s second son, and he also
behaved in a way that God found reprehensible (you’ll have to look it up,
eeyew!). The Lord dispatched him, too. Tamar, apparently worried she would
never have a child, disguised herself as a prostitute and intercepted Judah
when he took a short trip out of town. She became pregnant by her own
father-in-law, and one of her twin sons, Perez, became part of the lineage of
our Savior.
The second name is Rahab. Her behavior in Scripture is
heroic and full of faith – read it in Joshua 2 and 6 – but the Bible is
unflinching about her occupation when we first meet her: prostitution. She became
a follower of the God of Israel, married a man named Salmon and their son Boaz became
part of the Messianic line.
Boaz, of course, married the next name on the list, Ruth, a
Moabite woman whose first husband died. (Her story is told in the Bible book
that bears her name.) Ruth’s loyalty to her mother-in-law, Naomi, brought her to
Israel where she met and married Boaz, and thus became the great-grandmother of
King David.
David is linked to the last woman in the list – identified only
as “the wife of Uriah.” We know her from the story in 2 Samuel 11 as Bathsheba.
David abused his power as the king and initiated an affair with his married
neighbor. When she became pregnant, he arranged the murder of her husband and
then married her. The baby they conceived in adultery died, but their next son
was King Solomon.
So my point is this. When you come to these stories, they
don’t look like the Lord is in control at all. I have a hunch that, at the
time, the participants felt out of control or abandoned or overcome with their
own sin or defeated by circumstances. They probably did not feel the guiding
hand of God.
But God’s grace and wisdom and power accomplished His plans
without missing a beat. He is not the author of sin, but He certainly uses,
overrules, and transforms sinners.
When you have a tough week, God is still in control, and He
will still have His way in your life.
