[One-Verse Meditation]

Judges 4:21 (NIV) “But Jael, Heber’s wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died.”

[Meditation]

Israel’s commander, Barak, despite the order to go to battle from Deborah, hesitated, saying, “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go” (v. 8). Deborah promised she would certainly go with him, but she added this warning: “But because of the course you are taking, the honor will not be yours, for the LORD will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman” (v. 9).

Today’s text is the very scene where that promise is fulfilled. The Lord saves Israel through a Gentile woman, Jael. She breaks the peace treaty her husband Heber had made and does something unimaginable for that time. What was the reason she could do such a thing? It was because she knew what the right path was and where true life could be found. The Bible calls that ‘wisdom’—the wisdom to know where the ‘house of God’ should be built.

What’s more, the tools this wise woman used to kill Sisera are fascinating. A tent peg and a hammer—these were the most common, everyday tools in a woman’s hands at that time. This means that God reveals His divine nature right through that everyday life. Not a mighty sword or spear, but the tools of ordinary life brought victory in war. This is how God works.

That’s right. The Lord uses our daily lives, the ordinary time that seems no different from yesterday, as the very stage for His salvation. He enables us to discover Christ Jesus in the most trivial moments of our daily routine, and finally, the work that the Lord declared ‘It is finished’ becomes a reality in our lives. Therefore, for a saint, every moment is joy, and every day is thanksgiving. With this joy, we come to sing like Deborah and Barak, and we come to stand as ambassadors for Christ, proclaiming ‘the righteous acts of the LORD’ (5:11).

[Prayer]

Lord, a new morning has dawned. In this time called ‘today,’ you keep Your promise—by enabling the already saved saint to truly live out that life of salvation. And so, today again, I begin this new day with overwhelming expectation. Amen.
_________________

(Daily Reading)

Judges 4:17-5:11