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I’m sorry if this spoils anything for you but I’m not actually called Rahab and I don’t make or sell ribbons, nor do I make art with ribbons. I know, weird, right? It really throws some people off, especially those who have no real prior knowledge of the bible or the history of the Jews.
Rahab was a real woman, a woman whose story is told in the bible; mostly in the Old Testament in the book of Joshua but she also crops up in the New Testament in the both the epistle to the Hebrews and James epistle as well as in the Gospel of Matthew, where she is one of only 5 women mentioned in the genealogy of Christ. Surprisingly, considering that last fact, Rahab was not a woman of lifelong purity, she wasn’t even born Jewish. Rahab was from Jericho. What’s more Rahab was a prostitute, and a well-to-do one at that. Go figure.
So why do I refer to myself as Rahab’s Ribbon in my creative life? Well there are loads of reasons but it all started when I read Francine Rivers fabulous book A Lineage of Grace about “five stories of unlikely women who changed eternity”. I was gripped by all 5 stories but Rahab somehow resonated with me differently. Rahab was a woman who did not let the tragedy of her past, her present circumstances, her ethnicity, her lifestyle or her previous choices dictate her future. She was a woman who responded to the prompting of the Holy Spirit to take a massive leap of faith, to turn her back on all she had known and believed, in order to pledge a new, life-changing allegiance. She hung a scarlet cord out of her window in an extraordinary declaration of who she belonged to and who she would follow. She put her trust in a God she didn’t really know but to whom her soul responded unflinchingly and as a result her life and the lives of her family were saved, she was accepted into God’s chosen nation and she ended up married to a man who would be the great, great grandfather of King David and the 28 times great grandfather of Joseph, the carpenter who was entrusted with the upbringing of the promised Messiah. Rahab then lived out the rest of her life as a member of the people of Israel.
I was going through a period of intermittent insomnia around the time I was reading A Lineage of Grace and woke in the middle of the night thinking about Rahab and what her life had meant. I had just started crafting in earnest, particularly sewing and paper crafting and the idea of sewing or gluing a piece of red ribbon into everything I made got wedged in my head. I was taken with how this too could be declaration of whose I am, of the choice to follow I had made. When I was selling I even added a tag with Joshua 2:1-21 written on it. I too want to be undefined by what has gone before, by my sin, failures and mistakes but instead defined by what God has planned for my future. I want to be a woman like Rahab, a woman who is capable of great leaps of faith and trust in the LORD when all but the very next step is still hidden, and when even that step is shrouded in uncertainty and risk.
So, what does being Rahab’s Ribbon mean for my future? Well, simply, it means doing everything overtly for God, because if I follow His prompting and do what He asks while recklessly flinging that bright red ribbon out into the world where I exist, then I am declaring, “I belong to Jesus. I am His child and His servant. My life is His to do with what He pleases and everything I do is for Him.” So I’d better make sure that the actual work is neither half-hearted nor shoddy.
If I’m going to be a true Rahab and if that ribbon is going to be fully on display, then I’d better step out and step up and be the best version of myself; a true Woman of Influence (see @melwiggins for the manifesto) who “let’s her faith be bigger than her fear” (@arenewedspirit). There is no promise of riches, or of power, or even earthly blessing but there is the promise of God’s incomparable Grace and of the incredible privilege of being part of His extravagant plan.
I’ll buy in on that.
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