“Now Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, was a leader of Israel at that time. She would sit under Deborah’s palm tree between Ramah and Bethel in the Ephraim highlands, and the Israelites would come to her to settle disputes.’   – Joshua 4:4,5 (CEB) 

If you are looking for Deborah,
you’ll find her under a Palm Tree.
She’s sharing wisdom and counsel with all who seek her out.
She’s a prophet-judge. She sees things. She knows things.

I imagine her roots run deep as the tree sheltering her.
She’s connected, Deborah.
She connects with God, the One desiring freedom and peace for all.
She connects with people, her people
suffering under the cruel oppression of Sisera.

Full of desire for freedom and with a dream of peace,
Deborah directs Barak to raise an army and gather at the base of Mt. Tabor.
It should be said that Barak refuses to go to war alone.
Deborah rises, leaving her Palm Tree, and
she and Barak led a small army against Sisera.
She is full of courage.

They won. The greater army scattered when their iron chariots
mired in mud from the rains.
Sisera ran. He hid in a tent, accepting the hospitality of Jael.
Later, she pounded a tent-pin into his temple.
She was brave.

If you are looking for a story of named women
who are brave and courageous and powerful
and deeply faithful to the warrior-God-of-their-experience,
you have them in Deborah and Jael.

And, it should be said,
the people of God lived in peace for forty years.

What feelings arise in you as you read this story of courage and violence, faith and war, liberation and loss? Where do you see courage needed today —in peacemaking, truth-telling, protection of the vulnerable, or resistance to injustice?

Deborah and Jael were faithful to the “warrior-God-of-their-experience.”
What images of God have shaped your own faith? Which ones still give you strength, and which ones now ask to be gently questioned or transformed?

Imagine yourself sitting under Deborah’s Palm Tree. Draw or write what you would place at its roots:
a prayer for peace,
a question you carry about violence and faith,
or the name of a courageous woman who inspires you today.
Let the tree hold both your gratitude and your longing for a more peace-filled world.