Lost and Found Tamar and Hannah

Blog about the book: Lost Women of the Bible -by Carolyn Custis James

I think these two women is the most difficult to write a blog about. Both are desperate to have children. That is perhaps the only commonality they have. One's childlessness was due to the wickedness of her husband and injustice from her in-law and the other, because she is simply infertile. "The Lord closed her womb." One was a mean and ungodly husband and the other was good and kind.

Let me get it right, their childlessness is not the only commonality because both were on a mission. They knew their childlessness was not the end of their purpose. God's ezers do not rest even if there are no descendants to start with. God does not retire His ezers, take a look at Mrs Noah.

Tamar was on a mission. Had she failed, had she remained lost, the lineage of Jesus would have been broken. But for all her noble motives, she was described as " a brassy woman who took things into her own hands", she was deceptive (after all she posed as a prostitute) and immoral (she seduced her own father-in-law). Yet she was declared to be "righteous" by Judah himself. If we think about it, she was making a stand for God's purposes. Through the bloodline of Perez, her firstborn, she participated in the Divine plan to rescue the line of Christ.

Hannah was on a mission too. God was silent when it came to the early phase of Hannah's prayer life. She was lost in a culture that diminishes the value of a married woman who is childless. God came to the rescue with the birth of Samuel. But that's not the end of Hannah's mission. She prayed to God for a child and in the same breath, she made a vow to give him back to Him. She knew that God's purposes continues with Samuel who was the spiritual leader and mentor of a long line of great kings that included David, in a generation of wickedness that even the Levite priests were corrupt !( the sons of Eli have done things that are an abomination to the Lord. Through Samuel, she was a willing instrument in maintaining God's purposes during the turbulent times of the kings of Israel.

God brought them to the end of themselves, so that He can begin. So that there is no doubt that it was not their questionable efforts that caused these wondrous results. That it was only God who orchestrated the miraculous journeys of these two women.

In themselves, they were lost.

But they were found - in God.