Help! Love, MOM

Mother’s Day has a way of stirring up something different in each of us. For some, it is a morning of flowers, beautiful gifts, laughter filled phone calls, texts that make you smile.

Some of us have Mother’s Day on lock: clockin’ it!!!

For others, like me, (how about you?) Mother’s Day can be heavy; freighted with the weight of tangled and tattered relationships, painful histories, grief for what was or for what never should have been, in a phrase: it’s complicated.

If that is where you are today, there is a woman in scripture I want you to meet — or perhaps meet again. Her name is Rahab.

Who Was Rahab?

When we first encounter Rahab in Joshua 2, the introduction is blunt. She is a woman of Jericho, and she is a prostitute.

The text does not soften her status, nor should we race past biblical candor for that straightforward introduction sets up a stunning reversal.

Spies sent by Joshua enter the city. They tip over to Rahab’s house, not for “services” but to collect information from those most likely to have knowledge of what they need.

Just saying.

When the king of Jericho discovered the spies’ locations, he sent soldiers demanding that Rahab, the sex-worker, hand them over.

However, she did something no one could have predicted: Rahab hid them.

Then she lied to protect them.

Later, Rahab says, speaking truth about herself and the truth she had come to believe about their God:

“I know that the Lord has given you this land…For the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.” Rahab speaking in Joshua 2:9 and 11)

Perhaps the most unlikely person, Rahab, was the one person in Jericho who chose faith in Israel’s God.

She did not have a covenant with God, or a religious upbringing. She had only the reports she had heard — and she believed them.

Rahab tied a scarlet cord from her window as a sign, trusting that she and her family would not still be living on the wall when they fell down flat . (Joshua 2:17–21)

She wagered her life, and the lives of her entire family, on the LORD’s faithfulness and won!

New Testament Testimonies about Rahab

Rahab’s story does not end at the fall of Jericho. Centuries later, three different New Testament writers look back at her life and see something of worth.

The writer of Hebrews, in that great hall of faith of chapter 11, places Rahab between Moses and David.

She is not a footnote.

She is listed among those whose faith marked history: “By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.” (Hebrews 11:31)

James, writing about the relationship between faith and action, holds her up as a living example: “Was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?” (James 2:25)

Rahab’s faith was not just something she felt at heart — it moved her hands to shelter strangers and to tie a scarlet cord in a window and to trust God.

Finally Matthew, in the very first chapter of the New Testament, in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, does something quietly radical.

He names Rahab, undeniably placing her in Christ’s family record (Matthew 1:5).

This complicated lady became the wife of Salmon and Boaz’s mom.

Boaz would marry Ruth. Ruth would give birth to Obed. Obed would father Jesse. Jesse the father King David.

And, from the line of David, centuries later, Jesus would be born.

The “scarlet” woman, Rahab, with the scarlet cord in the window is in the lineage of the Savior who shed blood for the scarlet sins of the world.

A Word for Complicated Mothers and Mothers’ Days

Perhaps you are a mother who made choices early in life that follow you today. Perhaps you were not given a confident start in life — the love, the limits, the wings, and the roots, that every child deserves.

Perhaps your story includes chapters you have never told anyone, seasons of sorrow-filled regret, compromise, shame, bitterness or secrets that seem too dark to bring into the light.

Maybe, in your case, a complicated mom like mine “begat” or gave birth to a complex daughter like me.

The bible record of Rahab’s story does not erase what her life looked like before the spies arrived. However, redemptively, scriptures insist that:

• Rahab’s past debauchery did not disqualified her.
• Rahab was not too isolated by her sin. to be included into the fellowship of the saints.

Do you hear me, Sis?

The same God who saw a prostitute in Jericho, lovingly and irrevocably planted her into the lineage of His own Son.

That God sees YOU today.

Not just who you have been — but sees YOU, my dear sister, now, transformed daily into the image of His Son.

These days after Mother’s Day I pray are ones in which you see the miraculous, and transformational work of the Holy Spirit powerfully alive and leading you into all truth about Himself and you.

What is the Lord doing in and through your life after Mother’s Day? Do drop a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

Kimberly