Live into it...

The daily lectionary has been taking me through Judges recently. In Judges 11, there is a story about a warrior. This warrior's mother was a prostitute or mistress. Because of this, his brothers kicked him out of the family and drove him away. An outcast. Jephthah was then approached by his brothers when they needed help against an enemy of Israel. God had favor on this outcast and he conquered the enemy by way of a vow. It is this vow that makes this story even more interesting. Not only was Jephthah the son of a prostitute, but the Lord saw favor in him to be a judge! God takes nobodies and makes them somebodies. God takes the outcast and re institutes them back into society. It is in these moments of God's rescue that we make vows to God based on emotion. These vows we make, the vow that Jephthah made cost him nearly everything. He promised what ended up being his daughter to God as a sacrifice, his only offspring. She was also a virgin and spent two months weeping for her virginity until Jephthah sacrificed her as his vow to God.

As much as we cannot fathom this situation in our own culture and as much as we want to hate God for accepting this sacrifice, it is not God to blame. We serve a covenant God who honors his own covenant faithfulness. Amidst a world that does not own up to anything, much less honor the vows it has made, this story is a gut check and makes our spirituality/religion/relationship with God much more serious. Our God wants everything from us. He does not want our money, he does not want our time, he does not want our talents, he wants us: uncompartmentalized, wholly, submissive to "BE" who he has created us to be. It is not a list of do's and don'ts, but about faithfulness. We make vows during camps, during revivals, during the lowest points of our lives; let's live into them and be part of the new created order.