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Rahab


            By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient. (Hebrews 11:23)

          I can’t help but love Rahab. I suspect I’ll be overwhelmed when I meet her, not because of her former occupation, but because of her personality. In my imagination, she’s a people person. She knew how to seduce, put people at their ease, gain their trust, manipulate them, and lie to them. She was faithful and loving to her family, had the brains to look at what happened with Israel and Egypt mixed it up forty years earlier (very likely before she was born,) and she was smart enough to put it all together and figure out that the only way forward for her and her family was with the Israelites. She got a chance and didn’t lose it through indecision, and she was able to transition between being a Canaanite and being a Jew. 
           In fact, she found a Jewish guy named Salmon who was willing to marry her (I like to imagine he was one of the spies whose life she saved.) And she raised a son who gave a clear indication of being a godly man, who was able to think clearly in an awkward situation, and who had the courage and insight necessary to see past the past of a young woman from an undesirable culture (Jews were forbidden to marry Moabites.)  Yep, Rahab was Ruth’s other mother-in-law! 
          Rahab seems to me to have been a possibility thinker, a people person, a woman at ease with herself. She was free to use her will, free to use her mind (and perhaps a little too free to use her body.) She was a woman of great confidence who had clearly learned more than one way to deal with those who underestimated her. 
           Right now, I’m in a situation that wouldn’t have made her blink. Decisions need to be made about my life. Opportunities are out there that paralyze me because I’m afraid to fail and absolutely sure I will. Yep, right now, I’d like to have faith a bit more like Rahab’s.

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