What is in a therefore?
Recently I have been thinking about how there are some words that we gloss over when we read them, possibly because of their familiarity and quite possible because they are what my pupils in school like to term as the small words, the but and so. However, as I am drawn to thinking about community and what that means and looks like I am drawn to the word therefore.
Nehemiah was a man of the therefore, a man about community, family and more importantly a man about God’s business. I keep coming back to this story, for the past four years this is the story that the spirit brings me back to, the story I feel connected with and the story that I believe is for our generation now more than ever. Nehemiah is classed with the Minor Prophets; however, there is nothing minor about this man. He may have been ordinary, he was not a prophet like Isaiah or Jeremiah, he was a career man a man possibly like many of us, that is until his heart broke. In that place of weeping and mourning for the people of God surrender was born and an opportunity grasped.
The walls and their building amaze me; however, I am more taken with the how than the end result. How did they build? How did they deal with opposition? The answer is found in a therefore! The word therefore is more than simply a connective that shows you there is more to come. It is a word that commands action and resolve. Many times I have glossed over this word yet when I read chapter four of Nehemiah I could not pass it by,
“Therefore I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families, with their swords, spears and bows. 14 After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people “Don’t be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.” Nehemiah 4:13
Nehemiah was focused on completing what God had called him to do, he encountered opposition and he said therefore. He was not surprised by the actions of Sanballat, or discouraged instead he became resolute and decided to fight and build. He was not going to stop the work or bury the dream of the walls that God had given him.
This is a challenge to me and possibly to all of us. We have a community outside our doors that we often talk about and pray for but here Nehemiah shows us it is more, there needs to be more. We need to be a people who build, who complete, who fight for the families outside our doors, who combat opposition with the sword God has given us in His Word.
Perhaps we need to be a people of the therefore.