A Mother’s Faith
“Then the elders and all the people at the gate said, ‘We are witnesses. May the LORD make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the family of Israel. May you have standing in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. Through the offspring the LORD gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.’”
Today’s Text: Ruth 4:7-12 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
Rachel and Leah were the matriarchs of the twelve tribes of Israel. Tamar demanded her right to be counted among the people of God. She was the mother of Perez and the matriarch of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab. And of course, Ruth was the great-grandmother of King David.
With Mother’s Day coming up, I am reminded how these women were a part of God’s great plan of salvation for the world in Jesus Christ. They understood that God would fulfill His covenant with His people so that they would fill the earth with the glory of God. They wanted to participate in that blessing and share in that blessing, but they did so in faith.
The author of Hebrews wrote of the patriarchs and matriarchs -
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
— Hebrews 11:13-16
Do we understand tat we are foreigners and strangers on earth? My prayer for the mothers and sisters and daughters of Canvas is that they would all have such faith and zeal to participate and share in the covenant blessings of God. Because we will not see the complete fulfillment of God’s salvation history in our lifetimes, but we should act as if we will. Because Jesus will come back soon enough, and we will all see and experience it. That is faith.
These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
— Hebrews 11:39-40
I actually never met my biological mother. I’ve never even seen a picture of her. The last time I visited Korea and Jeju island where my family came from, I asked my (then) last surviving aunt on my father’s side if there were any pictures, but there weren’t.
Whoever my mother was, she had no sense of the spiritual legacy she could have been a part of or any sense of the spiritual inheritance that she might have left for me. How could she, when she had no faith? May that never be the case for our sisters in Canvas.
Father, You created the heavens and the earth. You created time itself. You know all things: the end from the beginning. How frustrating it must be for You when we don’t get it after You have revealed what is going to happen and what we are to do about it. Forgive us. I pray that You would fill up the sisters of our Canvas family with that vision You have put before us. And may we pursue Your promised inheritance with passion and zeal because of faith. And in that way, may serving You and seeking and saving the lost and making disciples and being disciples and building up Your church be the greatest joy of our lives. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
