Much like the right to vote, the distribution of speeding tickets and the BOGO sales at Payless Shoe Stores, the promises of God and the inheritance He provides apply equally to men AND women alike.
Women are not excluded.
Women have the opportunity to also pick up their purpose and run with it - straight into what God has for them.
Numbers 36 is completely absorbed in the process of passing on the inheritance of the Promised Land to the various tribes, but more specifically it deals with WOMEN and inheritance.
One tribal head had no sons - he had daughters to whom he would hand over the inheritance, the land they had been allotted. Concern rose and bubbled and stewed with great concern as to what would happen to this tribe's inheritance once the girls married.
They didn't want their inheritance going to someone else, as would be the custom at the time of the marriages.
God's solution: "Every daughter who inherits land... must marry a man from within her father's tribal clan. Every Israelite is responsible for making sure the inheritance stays within the ancestral tribe... each tribe of the people of Israel must hold tight to its own land" (v. 5-9)
Of course, back in those days, the women didn't have much -- if any -- say about who they married. That fact added to the fact that they'd need to marry someone within their own clan ....
What if they spotted someone in another clan who was a real looker? Someone who was way cuter and more successful or even more spiritual than Cousin Ed?
But i'm guessing these girls had to realize in their heart and soul the command of God, which led to the blessing of God not just for their generation but for generations to come.
A lasting inheritance encompassed such great PURPOSE in their lives and in the lives of the children they would bear, the lives of generations still to come.
So perhaps they protected -- on purpose -- their hearts; they shielded their minds and souls as they waited for their purpose to be realized. Because it says they did obey:
"Zelophedad's daughters did just as God commanded.... married within the families of Manasseh son of Joseph and their inheritance-lands stayed in their father's family" (v. 10-12)
These women had a purpose.
They took the necessary steps along the pathway of life to see that purpose realized.
Everyday moments were not their purpose.
Inheritance was their purpose. God's promise was their purpose.
What has God promised you?
2 comments:
"Everyday moments were not their purpose" JUMPED off the page at me!Thank you, Heather, I needed that!
From Pastor Eleanor....
I thought a lot about the same thing as I read that Scripture this morning.
Just as a thought, if the ladies did have to marry someone they weren’t ‘crazy’ about, God could, and I believe even did, give them a love for that man as time went on, just because they were faithful to the promise that came with the inheritance.
I think that happened a lot in the early days of America when there weren’t that many men to choose from way out West, perhaps, so the women married the available men, and in most cases it probably turned out just fine.
Eleanor
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