The last chapter of Hebrews begins this way: "Let brotherly love continue. Don't be forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."  Hebrews 13: 1-2

I got to be an angel once.  And I am definitely not angel material.  Year before last, one of the members of my church who is a widow in her seventies, fell down a flight of concrete stairs into her cellar and broke her legs.  She had the strength to somehow pull herself up to the stairs to the garage floor and into the kitchen, but couldn't stand to reach the wall phone.  She lay there hour after hour praying that God would send an angel to rescue her.

I had not called this lady in six months or more, but was concerned about a mutual friend we had in the Moore tornado area.  So I called her.  She was able to grab the cord hanging down the wall and jerk the phone off the hook and drag the receiver to her side.

"Sharon, what was that noise!! Are you okay?"  I asked, as the phone hit the concrete floor.
"No, no, I have broken my legs.  I need help."
I called 911 and the fire department and jumped in my car and raced to her house.

"I have been praying for hours that someone would call so that I could pull the receiver down and get help.  I asked God to send me an angel.  You are my angel," she said.

"I am definitely not an angel, but God definitely let me call you," I told her.

Now, when she sees me she calls me her angel.  I kind of like it.

You never know what God is going to do for you.  Just be sure that if you break your legs and pray for an angel, he's probably going to send you one.

I made a very serious Biblical mistake concerning the eleventh chapter of Hebrews.  Even though I read it.  Even though I reread it, I missed that the author mentioned Sarah, the wife of Abraham--the mother of all Israelites.  I said that Rahab was the only woman mentioned.  My bad.  It was bound to happen sooner or later that I would leave something important out.  My friend Carolyn is always careful  to review what I write and caught my mistake.  I even had Sarah's name underlined in my Bible.  I must have been half asleep when I wrote that blog.  Nevertheless, with two women mentioned, there couldn't have been a a greater difference in those two women.  God honored each woman's faith.

I am reading a book written in 1888 called Moody's Sermons.  The transcribed notes from the "Cleveland Leader."  Dwight L. Moody was the Billy Graham of his day.  Literally thousands and thousands of people found Jesus through his preaching.  I just finished his sermon on Faith.  God seems to find a willing servant through the ages to proclaim the gospel of Christ.

And Hebrews 12:1-2a says it all:  "Since we have such a huge crowd of men of faith watching us from the grandstands, let us strip off anything that slows us down or holds us back, and especially those sins that wrap themselves so tightly around our feet and trip us up; and let us run with patience the particular race that God has set before us.  Keep your eyes on Jesus, our leader and instructor…"

It is the description of an amphitheater.  Those who have gone on before us are watching us.  And because of their lives, we must try even harder to keep ourselves clean.  Each particular sin that holds you captive must be dealt with.  The writer says we are running a race.  Paul put that another way:

Philippians 3:13-14  "Brothers, I don not count myself to have apprehended (the prize): but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

Forget the past.  Tomorrow is a new start.  "Press on," was one of my husband Ken's favorite sayings.

James, the brother of Jesus mentions Rahab in his letter to the twelve tribes.  James 2: 25-26 : "Likewise, also, wasn't Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?  For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."

James is not saying that we are justified by the works we do, but rather that our faith produces works.  Rahab had faith in the God of the Jews who had parted the Red sea for the Israelites and had led them out of Egypt.  But what she did after she had that faith--hiding the spies, protecting them from the men who were trying to kill them, letting them down over the wall with a rope--those were the works that proved her faith.  She risked her own life.

A Christian will be identifiable by the works that they do.  Later when the Israelites invaded, Rahab hung a scarlet line out the window like the spies had told her to do.  In this way the invaders would know her house.  She also gathered all of her family into her house for protection.  That is faith.

She is remembered in history as a woman of faith in God.  The writer of Hebrews could have mentioned Rebecca, Leah, Ruth, or Esther.  They were all faithful women of God that didn't commit the sin that Rahab did.  But he didn't.  He mentioned a harlot.

I sometimes wonder if my faith shows.  Can others see the faith that I have in God through the works that I do?  I am sure I can do better.  Matthew 5:6  "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

When I was young, I used to play for the Methodist men's organization.  One of the older men always had them sing, "To the work, to the work..."  I always admired that about Methodists.  They put a lot of emphasis on doing something good in your community.  We didn't sing that song at my church!!  We should have.

Do something good.

The scripture I gave you yesterday about the "tired hands and the shaky legs" was a new one for me.  I must have read it before, because I have read Hebrews a number of times.  But the words "tired" and "shaky" never registered.  Maybe because I didn't used to be tired and shaky and worn out.

That's the reason we don't stop reading the Bible.  There is always something new.  We call it "The Living Word" because it is always telling us something that we never noticed before.  It's alive.

After naming a large number of men who were saved by faith, Hebrews 11: 11, 31 gives us the name of two women named in the group:  "Through faith Sarah received strength to conceive, (at an advanced age)"  and also, "By faith--because she believed in God and his power, Rahab the harlot did not die with all the others in her city when they refused to obey God, for she gave a friendly welcome to the spies."

That should give a lot of hope to any person who has failed in their life along the way.  Rahab was not condemned because of her sin, she was saved by her faith.

Her story is told in Joshua 2:1 and 6:17.  Joshua sent two men into the promised land to spy out the people and when the two were in danger of being  caught, Rahab came to their rescue.  She hid them under a stack of flax on the roof.  She told the men who were looking for them that she didn't know where they were.  When the danger was gone, Rahab said, "…I know that the Lord has given you this land…we have heard how the Lord dried up the …Red sea for you…"

The two men were very touched by her kindness and promised to save her and all her family when they invaded the land.  Which they did.

Sometimes we overlook people who are not acceptable.  But God looks on the heart.  Rahab had a heart to trust God.

Are you afraid of something unreasonable.  I am.  Heights.  Not airplanes, or 50 story buildings.  Just things that have no enclosure.  Grand Canyon almost did me in.  When I go somewhere like that, I feel like I am going to be sucked off the edge.  When I climbed the central winding staircase to the leaning tower of Pisa, I didn't realize that the top only had a very low banister.  It was also a narrow foot or two from the central staircase to the edge.  Compounded by the fact that I was leaning toward the edge.   When I stepped up onto the top floor, I immediately got down on my knees and crawled around to the other side so I could get back down the staircase.  It was not one of my finest moments.

It's not dying that scares me, it's falling off of something high.  Yes.  Unreasonable.  Yes.  I know I am not going to be sucked off the edge, but I still think that I am.  It still feels like it.

Hebrews 12: 12  "So take a new grip with your tired hands, stand firm on your shaky legs, and mark out a straight, smooth path for your feet so that those who follow you, though weak and lame, will not fall and hurt themselves but become strong."

If you are following me, just know that I am trying not to have shaky legs.  I am trying to mark out a straight, smooth path for my feet.  And I am trying to stay away from things that might lead somebody astray.  I don't want anyone to fall and hurt themselves spiritually because of me.

Paul said that if eating meat offends your brother--don't eat meat.  I certainly don't want you to pick up on my weaknesses.  If I am a stumbling block to another person, well, I have failed.  You and I are our brother's keepers whether we like it or not.  God said so.

I do not want to fail.

We all want things to turn out happy.  We want everyone to do what they are supposed to do.  We want all accidents and sickness and suffering to go away.  To cease.  But it doesn't work that way.

If you become a Christian--according to some 'prosperity' evangelists--you will be healed of all sickness.  Get rich.  And succeed in all that you do.  They say that if that isn't the case, that you haven't had faith in God.  That you haven't been saved…etc…  Ridiculous.  God never promised any such thing.  And the eleventh chapter spells out the terrible things that those of us who have faith may encounter.

If you are suffering--physically, emotionally, psychologically--don't despair.  The Bible says that Jesus suffered in all points as we do.  And the people of faith in the eleventh chapter did, too.

After naming dozens of those who were saved by faith in the Old Testament, and dozens that God helped and spared from trauma, the author finishes by saying that there were others who suffered:

Hebrews 11:35a-40 puts it this way: "But others trusted God and were beaten to death, preferring to die rather than turn from God and be free--trusting that they would rise to a better life afterwards.  Some…were beaten with whips, and others were chained in dungeons.  Some died by stoning and being sawed in two; others were promised freedom if they would renounce their faith, then were killed with the sword.  Some…wandered over deserts and mountains, hiding in dens and caves.  They were hungry and sick and ill-treated--too good for this world.  And these men of faith, though they trusted God and won his approval, none of them received all that God had promised them; For God wanted them to wait and share the even better rewards that were prepared for us."

That's hard.  It didn't turn out wonderful for everyone.  And it won't turn out wonderful for some of us. Christians are being killed in the middle east because of their faith.  But God is faithful.  It will all turn out right in the end.  There is a great day coming.

I have written so many blogs that I have forgotten what I have written!!!  This is number 457.  When I started doing this, back at blog #1, my plan was to do the book of Genesis and that was it.  Genesis is my area of expertise.  But one thing led to another and here we are.

I have been wandering through the book of Hebrews.  I told you last week that the eleventh chapter is called the faith chapter of the Bible.  It starts in Heb. 11:3 "By faith--by believing in God--we know that the world and the stars--in fact, all things--were made at God's command; and that they were all made from things that can't be seen."

My commentary suggests that the things that can't be seen could be a reference to atoms, electrons, etc. Even the writer, who didn't know about those things, could recognize that there were tiny things, and even things smaller than tiny.  He could recognize the hand of God at work in creation.  Psalms 19:1 "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the skies  show his handiwork.  Day unto day they utter speech, and night unto night show forth knowledge."  You can't deny that there is a Creator.

Faith is the key to salvation.  The writer of Hebrews begins to spell out all the people in the Bible who trusted God by faith.  In verses 4-33, which is a long, long list, he tells us many of the people who trusted in God by faith.  He starts with Abel, Enoch, and Noah and ends with Gideon, Samson and…David.   In verse 6, the writer says that, "Without faith it is impossible to please him (God): for he that comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder to them that diligently seek him."

1.  I want to please God.
2.  I believe that He is.
3.  I have diligently sought Him.   So I can expect to be rewarded.

My  rewards have been peace, joy, a thankful heart--to name a few.  Some people think that their rewards will be "things".  That is a meager idea of reward.  Money only lasts until you spend it.  Peace lasts.  Joy endures.  And a thankful heart lifts your spirit.  That is enough.