Believing women

Throughout the season of Lent, I’m reflecting on women in the Bible - 

named, unnamed, known and hidden...

Judges 13:8-12

Then Manoah entreated the Lord, and said, “O Lord, I pray, let the man of God whom you sent come to us again and teach us what we are to do concerning the boy who will be born.” God listened to Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field; but her husband Manoah was not with her. So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, “The man who came to me the other day has appeared to me.” Manoah got up and followed his wife, and came to the man and said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to this woman?” And he said, “I am.” Then Manoah said, “Now when your words come true, what is to be the boy’s rule of life; what is he to do?”

An unnnamed woman

Manoah’s wife

Chosen to mother one

who would deliver the people 

from the hands of oppressors

Approached by an angel

with the joyful tidings

of the birth of hope

and instructed on how

to raise the son she would bear.

But the word of a woman

was not enough

Her husband had to hear for himself

demanding that God’s messenger revisit

and detaining the messenger

until he too, had heard

what the woman had already shared.

Yet she would be the one

adopting the spiritual practices

and teaching them to her son.

She would be the one 

carrying

delivering

and raising

Samson

the one born

to begin the rescue

of the people of God

She would be the one

submitting her life

to the ways directed by God

for the well-being of her child

and the redemption of the people.

Just another woman

whose word was not believed

whose sacrifice

was not acknowledged

whose name we do not know...