Rizpah

I love Bible stories. I loved them when I did not even know how they would impact my Life in the future, and I cherish the lessons they have taught me. You may not realize how important it is to teach them to your children, because they can become a moral compass for them in the future. The training of a child should include your involvement with your little ones; because if they see your love for the stories, they will love them also. Even when your children are grown, you will have made your own precious memories. In those moments you spent reading to them, you were building character. Bible stories are the fiber God uses to impart integrity into our little ones.

Last week on Mother’s Day, I used as a reference the touching story of Rizpah and her care for the sons of King Saul after they had been crucified. They were not killed for their transgressions, but for their father’s violation of a treaty made with the Gibeonites. They were the innocent victims of their father’s failure to represent the God of Covenant to the world around him. It could have been that the great American poet Tennyson heard this story as a child and created his own narrative with Rizpah in mind.

Rizpah,
Flesh of my flesh was gone,
But bone of my bone was left—
I stole them all from the lawyer—
and will you call it a theft?
My baby, my bones, that had sucked me,
the bones that had laughed and had cried
Theirs? O no! they are mine—
not theirs—they had moved in my side.

The Power is in the Telling and no mother can read this poem and not feel Rizpah’s loss, for love is stronger as death. She fought valiantly night and day from the early rain until the latter rain to protect her sons and (as well as five more sons of Saul; whose mother did not bother to show up) from the insult of vultures and nocturnal predators from eating upon their dead bodies.

What Mother will rise up in this hour of pressure and tension and fight through the moral decay of our culture to breakthrough for the next generation? As a church family we have weathered storms together and we can say we have a history with the:
GOD OF THE BREAKTHROUGH

Thank you for your generous love and support of Heritage your love makes up the difference.

You are loved and appreciated and prayed for,

Your loving Pastors Cleddie and GayNell Keith