WEDNESDAY - 8TH JANUARY, 2025
MORNING WINGS DAILY DEVOTIONAL GUIDE - Olusola ADEJUMO
THE GIRL WHO WON'T FELLOW WITH OTHER GIRLS - Unorthodox Daughter Series 002
Genesis 29:6, ESV
"...see, Rachel his daughter is coming with the sheep."
In the new series I began yesterday, God started teaching us about Rachel, a girl or female child who comes with the sheep! A sharp and contrary belief to the fact that it is a boy or male child who should come with the sheep. However, we'll be looking at how different Rachel is from another woman of the Bible. To me, Rachel is distinct and it is a verse like the one I started with yesterday that made her so. Imagine the Bible saying, "...and see, Rachel, his daughter (daughter of Laban) comes with the sheep."
Should a female come with the sheep? Is that what she should be doing? While others are busy fetching water at the well, cooking and doing one house chore or the other, the Bible indiscriminately says, "Rachel (the daughter of Laban) comes with the sheep." This is distinction in calling and profession I am seeing. It is untypical of females to follow the sheep. We might have an example like Jethro's seven daughters who seek to give drink to their father's sheep. Only that, that of Rachel is overwhelmingly pronounced over theirs.
Exodus 2:16-17, KJV
"16 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. 17 And the shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock."
You might read this and even see nothing suspicious for which to regard them as shepherds but that of Rachel is undeniable. The reason is because Rachel is specifically and later on identified and called by the professional name of a shepherd. The Bible says, "while he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep, for she was a shepherdess" (Gen.29:9). Whether a "shepherd" or "shepherdess", it sure refers to a professional doing and discharging the same task and that's who Rachel is.
Rachel therefore leaves the class of her mother in-law, Rebekah who knows nothing but to be lost in the girls' chores. Our society is a funny one. It has carved roles for each gender to play. Women and generally females are to take the back seats and not be involved in the great outdoors. They're to be sane and good home keepers, raising in turn another generation of house keepers. However, Rachel defies traditional gender role here. He found no where else to be pitched but in what males do. She was earlier described as coming with the sheep and later called a shepherdess.
She left the great congregation of women who are bullied and regarded as inferior because all they do is stay at home and be at the beck and call of someone. Unlike her mother in law, Rebekah who meets heralds of her future husband by the well while coming to fulfill her chore of living the traditional girl's life - of fetching water, Rachel begs to differ.
Genesis 24:15-16, KJV
"15 And it came to pass, before he had done speaking, that, behold, Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder. 16 And the damsel was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known her: and she went down to the well, and filled her pitcher, and came up."
Rachel is rather a shepherdess and the supportive evidence is that she even comes with the sheep. While other girls or ladies of her age are bearing their pitchers on their shoulders, she bears the staff on her shoulders! What a thing! What a breaking of orthodoxy and begging to have a space amidst the great and mighty of her time who are renown for shepherding. While other girls are lost and their stories are not even told or remembered, yet Rachel's peeps out as the girl or lady who follows the sheep. May this distinction comes upon your children, especially the female children who might be discriminated against or are less wanted, esteemed as capable, gifted and talented as the male children in our society.
PRAYER/CONFESSION: I'm a girl child. I'm strong and mighty; able and capable. I'm not a toy or just an object of sex. I function in my office and calling. I am a shepherdess.
1 YEAR BIBLE READING PLAN
Matthew 6:19-7:1-6 & Genesis 20-22
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