Sass Be Seated!

     If you didn't know this about me, I've been black all my life. Yes. Almost 39 years of complete blackness. Actually, I've been black so long that I've mastered the black sister-girl "sassitude". Eye-rolling..check. Lip smacking...check. Finger waving...check. Wise cracking...check. Most importantly, male spirit breaking...check checkity check! There was something about growing up in a community where women brought home the bacon and fried it up in the pan that made it very easy for me to disrespect a man (Yes, I know it rhymes). In my experience, most men were physical and emotional robbers. Everyday, I saw them breaking into cars and homes to get what they wanted. The news showed me that they were rapist, adulterers, abusers, and liars. According to my reality, men were disappointments.

     The women around me had to be strong. They had to put men in their place. Women had to let men know their presence was no longer needed. And since men cornered the market on physical strength, we picked up the power of verbal warfare. Proverbs 25:24 says "Better to live alone in a tumbledown shack than share a mansion with a nagging spouse." Women have the wonderful ability to be encouragers, motivators, and deterrents to anger if we let God have His way. God did not create us to be carnal soldiers thriving to put a man in his place. We can know our value without emasculating the value of man.

     Look at Abigail in the Bible. She was married to Nabal. A man's whose name literally meant fool. I'm sure he was a fool from sun up to sun down. Surely, there were times she just wanted to tell him about himself, but Abigail chose to model her Father. She was Christ-like before Christ physically walked the Earth. When David came to kill Nabal for his disrespectful behavior, Abigail used godly wisdom and grace to handle the situation:

I Samuel 25: 23-34
As soon as Abigail saw David, she got off her donkey and fell on her knees at his feet, her face to the ground in homage, saying, "My master, let me take the blame! Let me speak to you. Listen to what I have to say. Don't dwell on what that brute Nabal did. He acts out the meaning of his name: Nabal, Fool. Foolishness oozes from him.

 "I wasn't there when the young men my master sent arrived. I didn't see them. And now, my master, as God lives and as you live, God has kept you from this avenging murder—and may your enemies, all who seek my master's harm, end up like Nabal! Now take this gift that I, your servant girl, have brought to my master, and give it to the young men who follow in the steps of my master.

 "Forgive my presumption! But God is at work in my master, developing a rule solid and dependable. My master fights God's battles! As long as you live no evil will stick to you.  If anyone stands in your way, if anyone tries to get you out of the way, Know this: Your God-honored life is tightly bound
in the bundle of God-protected life; But the lives of your enemies will be hurled aside as a stone is thrown from a sling.

"When God completes all the goodness he has promised my master and sets you up as prince over Israel, my master will not have this dead weight in his heart, the guilt of an avenging murder. And when God has worked things for good for my master, remember me."

   And David said, "Blessed be God, the God of Israel. He sent you to meet me! And blessed be your good sense! Bless you for keeping me from murder and taking charge of looking out for me. A close call! As God lives, the God of Israel who kept me from hurting you, if you had not come as quickly as you did, stopping me in my tracks, by morning there would have been nothing left of Nabal but dead meat."


     Abigail could have encouraged David to kill her husband. She would have been set free from dealing with his foolishness. However, she saw a larger picture. A godly picture. She recognized David's destiny was to change a whole region not just her circumstance. Her gentle encouragement kept him on course. How empowering is that for a woman? Like childbirth, we have the gift to push life into a situation.

     Here's a secret. The volume of your voice, your hands on your hips, and your quips make you as strong as...(wait for it, wait for it, wait for it) nothing. It is simply unattractive smoke and mirrors that you hope will make an impact. It does nothing in or for the Kingdom. A powerful woman understands that God didn't make her inferior. For she is powerful through her sword of influence. Yes. God has given us the power of influence. Abigail's influence protected David from being outside the Will of God. On the other hand, Jezebel's influence led to the destruction of her and her husband.

     The next time a man disappoints you know that you have a choice. You can be smoke and mirrors with your scouring sass or you can speak God's Will in his life. Pray for men. Look around. Satan is out to destroy our families. He is starting with the man. Between incarceration, homosexuality, drug abuse, and plain old lack of morality, Satan seems to be working overtime. Let's get in place, so our men can be in place with God. Pray don't pummel.


I do love you chosen women of God,

Dapoet