The Scarlet Thread

They were told a Spirit would pass over all homes.


Bring a year old lamb—the most perfect male—care for him in your home for four days.


Slaughter that lamb, roast it over a fire and paint its blood over your doorway. Then eat it quickly, dressed and ready to leave; do not go through your door until morning.


************


That blood saved the life of every first born-both human and animal in that household.


This was not true for families who did not claim the blood of the Lamb.


************


The color of blood—scarlet—runs throughout the Scriptures; it represents meaning, commitment, promise, forgiveness and restoration.


Covenants—a promise, an agreement— were affirmed by blood as proof of commitment.

Because God is just, sin itself creates a spiritual debt; Yahweh makes it clear that justice requires both retribution and restoration.

************


In the Garden, Adam and Eve were unclothed, roaming unashamed through the most beautiful garden on Earth. 


But when they broke faith with the Father, they knew their nakedness—both literal and spiritual.


Sin had entered their dimension; now even the animals they had named and with whom they had shared their lives became enemies.


Justice requires that all sin results in penalty, sometimes physical, sometimes spiritual and sometimes both. 


These warm and furry friends, nurtured and even named by their humans, now became food; their skins were cut from their living bodies to become coverings.


************


She did what she needed to do in that city full of those who loved themselves more than others.


She had her own business, you might say, which afforded insight into the motives and hearts of people, especially those who governed the city; they feared Yahweh, the God of their enemies, the Israelites, who destroyed those who worshiped the likes of Baal and Moloch that required the burning of babies as sacrifice.


She was convinced that Yahweh was sovereign, no God higher than Him and because of this, she could feel His presence in the heavens above and in the earth beneath her feet. 


She could feel His love for those who respect life and who loved Him.


That is why when the two men—His spies—came to her dwelling, she knew and hid them because Yahweh had prepared her. 


Together they swore an oath that she would not reveal their presence if, when the time came as she knew it would, they would spare her and those she loved.

The sign to save her family was a scarlet cord hanging from her window to identify her home.

To understand that day was beyond the telling.

For seven days they marched soundlessly around her city. Most shook in fear; it was both an awesome and awful sight when the walls of the city fell.


But in her home, Yahweh’s promise meant more than life itself.


That the walls of the city, her city, would fall with the shout and the sound of a trumpet was inconceivable, but Rahab trusted, believing Yahweh’s Words as true, reaching beyond the limits of the universe.


The scarlet cord saved them.


************


When he was 24, Swedish songwriter Tim Bergling released one of the most poignant, beautiful and popular songs ever written: Wake Me Up.


Singing merrily that he was just “feeling my way through the darkness…and I didn’t know I was lost/So wake me up when it’s all over/all this time I was finding myself and I didn’t know I was lost.”

This electronic dance tune is cheerful, designed to stir movement; it still plays frequently around the world.

Bergling was generous, involved in many philanthropic causes, often revealing his struggle with addiction. His stage name Avicii was taken from the “lowest level of Buddhist hell,” an image he repeated throughout his music videos.

Two years after retiring at the age of 26, Bergling took his life.

After, his family eulogized him, mourning that all his life he had struggled with questions about life, of meaning and happiness. 


************


These biblical pictures— the Passover, the fall of Jericho, the sin that entered Eden—are images that foreshadow some event to come in the New Testament.


The blood covenant required in the Old Testament was replaced by the blood of Christ, the son of God in the New Testament.


God has not changed. Justice requires retribution and restitution.


The scarlet cord hanging from Rahab’s window must have contrasted with the bland landscape of a stone wall, but that cord saved her family.


It was symbolic of the blood of Christ that offered salvation to all those who love Jesus.


There is a beginning and end to everything.


God’s justice is real, but He offers rescue through the shedding of Jesus’s blood, even to the pagan prostitute Rahab who became part of the physical line of Christ. 
 I see it now, through the distance, a bright scarlet cord of salvation, offering the only escape from the surrounding and accelerating evil.


************


….you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold…. 

but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. (1 Peter 1: 18,19)

***********

WAKE UP