Beyond Limitations
Where is your faith life and your relationships with others limited by what you think you know?
Nehemiah 8:3
He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Water Gate in the presence of the men, women and others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law.
“Others who could understand”?
When many people think of religion, they can’t help but think of it in terms of who is out and who is in. But, this passage specifically says that the Book of the Law was read to “men (expected), women (less expected), and others who could understand.”
Were the “others” children or perhaps non-binary eunuchs who in Isaiah 56 it is written that–if they keep God’s Sabbaths and hold fast to God’s covenant—will be given a name “better than sons and daughters” that will endure forever? The scripture does not say.
But what it does offer is an awareness that God’s ways are not our ways. By specifically naming “others” who were not part of the binary of men or women, but simply those “who could understand,” we find an openness that invites us to wrestle with what we think we know.
Where is your faith life and your relationships with others limited by what you think you know?
— Pedro Silva