Calling and Purpose 29—Making the Best of a Bad Situation

The journey of understanding and living into your gifts, calling, and purpose is not smooth sailing.  In fact, as we learned from the story of Esther, we can think our purpose is one small thing—that we may not even initially want to be a part of--and it may also turn out to be one very huge thing.  It always takes God to connect the dots and to work things out according to His purposes, but that intervention is also not always obvious—or not evident except by hindsight (if at all).

 Bathsheba:

Bathsheba, seen by King David, bathing on her rooftop, is summoned to sleep with the king—I suspect without option of refusal seeing that the king had all the power.  Bathsheba then finds herself pregnant by David, not by her husband, Uriah (who is off at war, fighting on David’s behalf). David arranges to have Uriah killed in battle, takes Bathsheba as his wife, and figures that’s the end of it. How must this all have been for Bathsheba? Now a widow.  Suddenly to be a mother, but not by her husband.  Essentially a concubine of a powerful king until he decides to take her as a wife—but one of multiple wives of that king.

The baby is born, gets ill and dies.  Can her life get any worse?  Is all of this out of her hands?  Can God redeem even this?  She has another child—a son—Solomon.  In the course of time, and thanks to the inappropriateness of David’s other children as kingly leaders, Solomon is given the throne of Israel by his father.  Bathsheba, it seems, has risen to the role of favored wife.  She continues to have access to her son King Solomon during his reign.

 What she doesn’t see is that Solomon is to be part of the lineage of Jesus—a descendant of David.  Her eternal significance is to be part of the ancestry of the Messiah.

 Rahab:

Rahab, a prostitute in Jericho, chooses to hide the Israelite spies, at risk of her own life.  She had heard of their God and knew that her people were living in fear of Israel and their Lord and His power. She boldly states “for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below” (Joshua 2:11).  By choosing the Lord and His people, her life is spared, along with the lives of her family—her father, mother, brothers, and sisters and their families. Rahab remained among the Israelites, marrying Salmon and giving birth to Boaz.  God uses her to save her family and to enable Israel to take the city. He also takes her out of her former life of prostitution and gives her her own family.

 Rahab’s son Boaz marries Ruth, the Moabite.  Did Rahab’s adoption into Israel influence Obed to also embrace a foreigner as his wife?  One would think so.  And, Obed becomes the father of Jesse who is then the father of King David.  Did Rahab live long enough to know that she was part of a kingly lineage?

 What she doesn’t see is that her lineage is part of the direct line to Jesus—the Son of God.  Amazingly enough, Rahab is included in the list of the faithful in Hebrews 11, one of only two women mentioned by name.

 Ruth:

Naomi and Elimelek move to Moab during a famine in their land.  Their two sons marry Moabite women—Ruth and Orpah.  Elimelek and his sons all die, leaving the three women as widows. The famine in Judah ends, and Naomi decides to return home, telling Orpah and Ruth to stay in Moab with their own families. Orpah leaves, but Ruth chooses not only Naomi and the people of Israel but their God: “But Ruth replied, ‘Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me’” (Ruth1:16-17).

 Ruth and Naomi return to Bethlehem, where Ruth works the fields, gleaning the leftover grain to support them.  When Boaz, in whose field she was gleaning, shows her favor and she wonders why, we learn that, in spite of her being a foreigner, word about her kindness to Naomi has spread.  Boaz tells her “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge” (Ruth 2:11-12).

 Eventually, Ruth marries Boaz and they have a child—Obed—who is the father of Jesse, the father of King David.  Ruth, the Moabite, finds herself in the kingly lineage.  Even more astounding, she is found in the lineage of Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah.

·       Can you trust God to take care of the rest of your story—even beyond you and your children to future generations of impact?

 ·       What is your one next thing in which you can be faithful—that God might multiply it into something of eternal significance?

 ·       Where is God perhaps calling you away from a less-than-healthy life pattern or to repent of past sin and shame and calling you to new life?

 ·       How is God calling you to stay with a person or people—to remain faithful until He shows you a next step?

 For more on these subjects, see the Gifts-Calling-Purpose blog. 

Shirley Giles Davis, author of the God. Gifts. You. Your Unique Calling and Design workbook, is a consultant, coach, facilitator who has worked with faith-based organizations, nonprofit agencies, and law enforcement leadership for over 30 years.  Shirley has been EquipConnectServe Director at First Pres Boulder since 1999.  She has worked with leaders and organizations in 47 of the United States as well as having clients outside the U.S.  Contact Shirley