On our journey this month we have been learning about the wisdom in the Old Testament. This week's reading - Joshua Chapter 2 - contained the intriguing figure of Rahab, a Canaanite woman who was a sex worker at the margins of her home town of Jericho.
Her fear of the God of the Israelites, and love for her own family, led her to place her trust in two men who came to spy upon the town on behalf of Joshua. His campaign to capture Jericho was ultimately successful, and Rahab's actions led to the Israelites sparing her and her family from certain death.
Rahab's story was about simple trust in God and love for family - she was a woman who was otherwise shunned by her community and regarded as 'unclean', and yet God's purpose was at work in her life. It's inspiring to think that whoever we are and whatever our condition in life, God can work through us - we don't have to wait for some idea of perfection to be accomplished in us first.
We followed with silent meditations on love, simplicity and trust. Here's the prayer after the sermon about Rahab, adapted from Fr. Michel Quoist, Prayers of Life:
If we knew how to listen to God, if we knew
how to look around us, our whole life would become prayer...
Words are only a means.
However, the silent prayer which has moved
beyond words must always spring from everyday life,
for everyday life is the raw material of prayer.
God bless,
Helen
Her fear of the God of the Israelites, and love for her own family, led her to place her trust in two men who came to spy upon the town on behalf of Joshua. His campaign to capture Jericho was ultimately successful, and Rahab's actions led to the Israelites sparing her and her family from certain death.
Rahab's story was about simple trust in God and love for family - she was a woman who was otherwise shunned by her community and regarded as 'unclean', and yet God's purpose was at work in her life. It's inspiring to think that whoever we are and whatever our condition in life, God can work through us - we don't have to wait for some idea of perfection to be accomplished in us first.
We followed with silent meditations on love, simplicity and trust. Here's the prayer after the sermon about Rahab, adapted from Fr. Michel Quoist, Prayers of Life:
If we knew how to listen to God, if we knew
how to look around us, our whole life would become prayer...
Words are only a means.
However, the silent prayer which has moved
beyond words must always spring from everyday life,
for everyday life is the raw material of prayer.
God bless,
Helen
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