The Lord will create a new thing on earth –
A woman will surround a man.
– Jeremiah 31:22
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I found this verse a couple of months ago and felt in my spirit that it applied to this purpose that had already begun to materialize out of the fog of my confusion and grief. Oh, how little I yet know.
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God is downright not to be believed. He is the very definition of unbelievable and yet he is completely trustworthy. A God of paradoxes. I shouldn’t wonder I myself am filled with them: my Creator is the ultimate storehouse of them. Last night I put “helpmeet” in the search engine, just on a whim, a ripple of curiosity. Funny how so many of those are actually the whisperings of a greater power at work. I pulled up thread after thread that had been woven into this whole tapestry.
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I knew from reading John Eldredge that Eve had been created as Adam’s ezer kenegdo, a lifesaver, and that the term was only used elsewhere in Scripture to describe God when he was coming through for his people in their desperate need. Well, apparently, the term ezer (which is where the “help” of “helpmeet” comes from), according to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible means “aid; help.” Azar means “to surround; i.e. protect or aid; help; succor.” Kenegdo means “corresponding to, counterpart to, equal to, matching.” That’s where the “meet” came from; basically to meet a need or requirement. Wow.
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Well, when I studied further, I learned that the ezer of Eve’s title originally had two roots, one meaning “power” and the other, “strength.” The traditional interpretation of Eve’s title portrays more of a help, comfort, support, to the exclusion of the other side of the indivisible coin: the noun ezer appears twenty-one times in the Old Testament to denote strength or power. It is often a military context that is used, such as in Deuteronomy 33:26-29. The strength or power of a fighter, a warrior.
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Kenegdo didn’t just mean an ezer (or help) suitable for Adam. It means a true match, as in “I will make a power [or strength] corresponding to man.” “God makes for the made a woman fully his equal and fully his match. In this way the man’s loneliness will be assuaged.”
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Wow. Again.
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There is no one else who could do what I do. I am ezer kenegdo for one man and one man alone. It is inconceivable that I should do this impossible purpose and lubricate the wheels of God’s freedom and purpose for this man only to go on to some easier man, a man I never had to fight for, who never needed what I had all along to offer. How could any other man be my true match? How could any other woman truly understand B____ and earn him as I have done?
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There never was any hope for us. We were doomed from the start. I was always going to awaken to hope and faith at his touch and he was always going to turn away in his lack of them. Our story was never going to bloom. But that’s not figuring in God. God specializes in the impossible. Anything less just isn’t as fun. He exults in the desert, the wasteland, the desolate places because he loves proving that the unchanging God is a God of glorious change, that the God of perfection loves to take imperfection in his hands. B____ was always going to leave and I was always going to be devastated.
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And God was always going to move stones. He is the Resurrection and the Life.
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It was always going to be this hard and lonely. But my research took me to that question, too. A sermon by C.I. Scofield called “Waiting on the Lord” showed up in one of my links. It dissected that glorious verse in Isaiah 40:31:
But they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength,
They shall mount up with wings as eagles;
They shall run and not be weary,
And they shall walk, and not faint.
The point that resonated with me the loudest was the analysis of the part about eagles. Eagles are solitary creatures, unlike many other birds, and they reach unparalleled heights. Scofield explains that, much as eagles, we have to fly alone with God before we can come back down to earth to do good for others and God’s kingdom. As Scofield so eloquently puts it:
Before God uses a man greatly, he isolates him. He gives him a separating experience; and when it is over, those about him, who are no less loved than before, are no longer depended upon. He realizes he is separated unto God, that the wings of the soul have learned to beat the upper air, and that God has shown him unspeakable things.
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This is why I needed to be completely alone with God during this time. Why every time I considered bringing someone into the mystery of this strange purpose, something in me whispered, “Not yet.” I had to have time to learn God’s voice. I had to recognize it while there were no other voices to compete, to rely upon, so that when I rejoined the world I would still be able to pick out that still, small voice from the unending clamor. I have been completely changed from ten months ago, in large part because I had no one else to rely upon as I navigated these foreign waters. And God has shown me, and continues to show me unspeakable things. Things not to be imagined. Impossibilities.
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I was reading my journal the other day and remembering my supreme reluctance to sign up for Match.com. I couldn’t comprehend that that should be “our story,” even though I knew without a doubt that if I did find him on Match, I would never say a word of minding. Which was true. But my untested, weaker mind could never have guessed at – conceived – the full truth. That was only the beginning of the story. That was merely the creaking old gate that opened up on a vista beyond imagining. This is our story: not some dusty common dating service, but this. No one I know has anything like this as their story. No one I know has fought for their love as I have, no one earned their prize with so much blood and tears and sweat. This is the ultimate in romance – a warrior, a prize, the wilderness testing every step of the journey. A never-before-seen purpose tempered in the blood of the only One who can save the lost, free the captive. I am Nicole. I am ezer kenegdo. I have a purpose, a point to this long life. I have a name now. And yes, one day, I’ll be the Beauty. I will be rescued and fought for and won, again and again. I will be pursued. But now . . . oh, God, what glories are mine in my strong hands that know the grip of the sword, the carved muscles of the swing and cut, the unbending back and the clear vision. What strength comes from you, what wonders you have wrought in me. I am your daughter. I am your warrior-princess.
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And we are taking our land back.
For C.I. Scofield’s sermon, click here: http://users.tc3net.com/jpaws/waiting.html
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