Rivkah רִבְקָה

I remember one late summer evening watching her as she sat nearly motionless in the car. Nearly an hour later she appeared at the front door. She smiled as she passed through the kitchen saying, "It was wonderful. I sat and talked to God and He answered me." I wasn't surprised since she taught us from childhood that God listens and talks to us.

Her spiritual life was rich and complex as expressed in her prayers that were both moving and inspiring. When I struggled through the night with asthma she would touch my forehead. Her lips moving in a silent prayer like Hannah praying for a son. Other times she was vocal with strong petitions that didn't reflect her family's somewhat legalistic background. She learned to pray in tongues and worship with hands raised with a loving abandonment.

Rivkah.

We know this woman in the Bible by her English name, Rebecca (or Rebekah). A woman who took a calculated risk of faith to leave her father's house to marry a man who was a child of promise, Isaac. She lied to her father after stealing the household idol and sat on it (Genesis 31:34). And later convinced her son Jacob to deceive his father to bless him in order to secure a future for the generations to come (Genesis 27).

Rebecca is the name of my mother.

Rivkah in Hebrew means tied up or beautifully ensnaring which so speaks of my mother's deepest struggles. After some twenty years the cords of matrimony thinned and then finally broke. My father decided to leave. She was now free of what seemed a colorless and lifeless existence. Those years were difficult to keep us feed, clothed, healthy and spiritually nourished.

My mother's beauty was notably marked by a vivid personality that could charm and disarm men who found her both enchanting and mystifying. In her later years, she found solace from ailing health by taking long mountain hikes and listening to the melodic churning of a brook. Her photos capture moments where nature and God restored a life of a young woman full of dreams and hopes for future that had all but slipped through her fingers.

But Rivah could not be free of one rope that tightly bound up her beauty and desires. Loneliness. Perhaps it was the same feeling when she sat in that empty car those many years before when talking to God. Now at seventy years old the loneliness that had walked with her daily is falling behind as her eyes look heavenward. You can hear it in her voice. The deepest desire to the hold the hand of one Man that has never failed her and could satisfy the deepest desire of a love that gives way to a certain rest.

To my mother, Rebecca, with love.

Thank you for being my spiritual Rivkah to ensure a spiritual heritage that I have today.

Your son,
Andrew