Issue 468
If you were considering a list of priorities in a project to rebuild a nation’s infrastructure what would be top of your list? You might like to narrow it down to an organisation or business and consider the same question. Once you have got the basic needs such as housing, food, clothing and shelter, what would you consider to be up on the first line? In fact what might be your top ten or so? We have reached the tenth chapter of Nehemiah’s journal. He has got the basics in place. He has got some leadership in place and some stability into the city as well as security. Everyone is in a mood to pledge themselves to a new order. Actually, it’s a restoration of the old order but it is new for them. Visit his mind and you can find an interesting top level concern. It has to do with daughters. At the beginning of their great list of promises is one about not giving daughters to marriages outside the community and not taking daughters from outside the communities as wives for their sons. Is this where you would have started? There is a list of around eight big issues in this promise fest but getting it right with their daughters is top of that list. Let’s not be naïve here. Nehemiah was a man of his era. He believed that it was important, and in fact commanded, to avoid intermarriage outside of the nation. The very language seems alien to some readers today as it contains the element of giving or not giving daughters to husbands according to parental choice. Nehemiah could see a glimpse of something which could take many more years to clarify. His thinking was framed by his times but his obedience connected him to timeless truths. Consider what happens when a daughter is treated with honour, respect, love and care. What does it build into her soul? First, she gains an inner strength, a deep sense of self-worth and a deposit of wisdom. She will be empowered to make good choices. If one of these choices includes who she marries she will find herself doubly empowered both from within and with her well chosen husband in her new home. She will also know for sure that she has back up when she needs it from her father (note the context of Nehemiah’s thinking was very patriarchal at this stage so we are visiting a particular model here). Now she has triple strength. Hers. Her husband’s and her father’s. Combine these matters and she will now be in an amazing position to reproduce, power, strength, respect, wisdom and honour in others. These characteristics will be passed on, they will be reproduced in her work, creativity and her ability to multiply blessing. Should she now choose to have children, male or female, her capacity to spread strength throughout the community will be huge. Consider the alternative. Neglect, abuse, devaluing, disrespect from the older generation to its daughters will produce wounds, damage and scars which will run deep into the corporate life of a nation. Further damaged daughters and sons will struggle to live out healthy expressed lives. So Nehemiah, albeit with partial vision, has realised that restoration will be linked to how a nation treats its daughters. Please don’t miss the context. The nation had lost its way. It was broken. Of course it needed radical and complete re-building. It would need sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, heroes and builders. It would need female and male to play their part in every aspect of the restoration. It seems, however, in Nehemiah’s mind it would be the treatment of their daughters which would open the door, lay the foundation and make all the difference. Look around you. See how daughters are treated in cultures, businesses, churches, organisations and communities. You may be able to glimpse what Nehemiah glimpsed and ponder why his mind went that way. You may even want to talk to a daughter or two if you want some more clues. Bible Section Nehemiah 10:30 “We promise not to give our daughters in marriage to the peoples around us or take their daughters for our sons.
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Geoff Shattock
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