Judges: Deborah

    The story of Deborah is always one that has fascinated me. She has a firm calling on her life that she lived into boldly.
     But you cannot tell the story of Deborah apart from that of the people she was called to lead. Her story starts out with words that are familiar in the book of Judges, "the Israelites again did what was offensive to the Lord." We are explicitly told what they had done, but we can guess that they strayed in ways far from the Lord, falling back into their same pattern time and time again. It is the Israelites that the Lord put in the hands of the Canaanites and they are the same people God choose Barak to save through a prophecy from Deborah.
    So you also cannot tell the story of Deborah apart from Barak. In may ways we would assume that Barak should have been the hero of the story - the one that God chose to use to free the Israelites. Only he said no. Through his words and actions he tried to shove the job off on someone else. Instead of becoming the hero, he was the antagonist, attempting to go against the word of God.
    In many ways Deborah and Barak acted as opposites of one another, thus posing the question who we identify with. Truly identify with.
    It is so easy to say that we are the Deborah's in the world, listening to the call of God and responding, but is that always true? What prevented Barak from responding in obedience and do we see those same things in our life as well? What is God calling us to do and how will we respond?