#228: Salome's Letter - (Hope for a Tree)

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Dearest mine,

Just the thought of calling you mine roars my entire being to life! God's perfect gift to me. Yes, I'm smiling right into my notepad, the kind of smile that is so fulfilling. I am truly happy that in the end, I didn't miss you who is my right because indeed there were so many wrongs. You are proof of God's faithfulness, and if I certainly ever get to call you mine, then my joy will be complete indeed. I write to you with joy but then with deep sorrow, sorrow enough to cause trembling and I wonder if could truly follow through to the end with this letter. One would wonder how joy and sorrow could share the same space; well with time as we journey through this letter, all will unfold.

As I said earlier, before you, came many wrongs, men so wrong they left me scarred. I write this letter not as the wholesome woman you might have dreamt of, not as a lady who guarded her purity with her life, not as one who never awoke love from its slumber.

I have been defiled, not once.

I write with much pain, as I know the burden of guilt because I walked into my own doom on my own feet. I have let men feast on me as vultures do the dead, all in the quest for a love I had no understanding of. In the end, I was discarded of. I took this temple of God and made rubble out of it, gave it no respect and so the men who hung around me never did too.

My heart shakes each time I think back to this past of mine, and sadness tries to elude me but then, I am reminded again of where I am and how I got here.

Beloved, I am confident that I am not the lady I used to be. Mercy and grace found me one fateful day, I met with the Rabbi from Nazareth called Yeshua; it was one of those days I was acting immorally, only this time, I was caught by the Pharisees and brought to the Rabbi. What happened that day was strange, I felt I had come to the end of myself – actually, I did. Initially, I had made several attempts to end the habit of sinning, but I always gave in to pleasure and monetary rewards. As you know by Moses’ law, I should have been stoned. I was weeping and could not hear what the Rabbi said to the crowd, but by the time I lifted up my eyes, I was alone with Him. Then He said the most graceful thing I had ever heard: “Neither have I condemned you; go and sin no more”. It keeps ringing in my mind to this day as it did 5 years ago when I first heard Him (John 8:1-11).  It was a life-defining moment for me. I walked from His presence with victory over what had caged me all my life. And as I read the Tanakh, I am often reminded of God's love and who I am in him, I particularly draw strength from the prophecies of Isaiah 43:1 as he reminds me every time that I am His.  I am warm and complete in His love, I know through His word that I am a new being, not condemned by Him, and in that, I have found the grace to grow more in knowing Him.

Beloved, I write to you as your undeserving wife. I write to you, knowing fully well that if you are God's gift to me, then I am very undeserving of you. I write with sorrow, that you will not meet your bride faultless, oh the pain runs so deep I tremble at it. I have asked God time and time again if you will be able to forgive me, and he has constantly reminded me that in Him nothing is impossible. So with this, I make my promise to you, that I will continue on the path of redemption that Yeshua, the Rabbi from Nazareth led me in, I will wait for you as I have done since I met Him in repentance and contrast with my former ways (Matt 3:8; I Pet 4:1-4). I will not be swayed by any other. I will not be engaged in things that bring shame first unto God and then unto you my husband. I pledge the left part of my dignity to you.  I promise I will keep growing even as I wait for you, keep evolving into the perfect help meet that you need and though not wholesome in the eyes of man, I will keep myself wholesome as the new creation man. I promise that through God's help, you will constantly count it a blessing to have obeyed God in making me your bride. I also pray for you Beloved, that God will keep helping you grow in Him, I pray the lord helps you to love me without fault. That the grounds of your heart be softened.

I dream of the day I walk down the aisle to meet you, I dream of the moment of unveiling your bride who the Lord has made spotless, as I dream the dream I'm underserved of, I smile through the tears welling up in my eyes filled with gratitude to Jesus, who gave me such a hope to dream this beautiful dream. I'm grateful for the opportunity to wait for you. And for you, again I say: I WILL WAIT.

Beloved...I have loved you, I love you and I will love you even still. 

With love from your redeemed betrothed,

Salome


written by Chimnaza Onah


Today's blog post is dedicated to those who have been made to believe that they have frustrated the hand of God by their [past] actions, thus putting them in a hopeless situation. May Salome's letter breathe hope and may God pierce through the looming darkness to assure you that there is hope for a tree if it is cut down, that it will sprout again; there is still redemption for you in God (Job 14:7-9).

Shalom.

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