Scarlet Garland/Scarlet Cord

Back in early October, 2008 Dean and I went on a “Foliage Tour” of the New England states.  We hit the right time that year because the colors were glorious. As we travelled from Boston to Lexington, I noticed a most unusual “decoration” on many of the evergreens along the highway. It appeared that red garlands had been draped on the trees. After questioning someone about the strange sight, they said it was holly, which is a parasite, the leaves of which had turned a brilliant red.

When I read the chapter in Ann Voskamp’s book, The Greatest Gift, about Rahab’s scarlet cord, I was reminded of the holly bedecked trees alongside that Massachusetts highway. The reason for that comparison will become more apparent further on.

Rahab’s story found in Joshua ­­­­chapter 2 is an awesome one of faith in the face of imminent death. To cut to its essence, the Israelite spies whose lives she saved gave her the following life-saving instructions: she was to hang a scarlet cord out her window to save herself and her family when the walls of Jericho fell before God’s power, giving Israel the victory

This pagan prostitute-turned believer obeyed and survived. But that’s not the end of her story—or of God’s. She married a prince of Judah named Salmon, they had a son named Boaz, and two or three generations later, her great-great grandson David, became the mighty king of Israel.

But still God’s story was not finished because Jesus Christ, the Messiah, came from David’s lineage which means that Rahab was the many-times removed grandmother of the Savior. How awesome is that!

This paragraph from The Greatest Gift is wonderfully descriptive. “Rahab, the scarlet woman, flings a scarlet cord out her window—that one thread everything’s hanging on. And that scarlet cord is her identity—that scarlet line running from the animal sacrifice covering Adam and Eve’s nakedness in the Garden of Eden to the crimson markings of blood on the doorframes of the first Passover to the willing drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane—and Rahab is delivered by that singular scarlet cord and tied into the Jewish family.” As are we who believe.

Those beautiful swags of brilliant red festooning the evergreen trees we saw alongside the Massachusetts highway would eventually become the means of death for the trees. That’s exactly what our sins (the Bible speaks of them as being like scarlet) will do to us unless we’re willing to accept a very expensive remedy—our Savior, Jesus Christ, dying in our place to pay for our sins.

Red garland on a Christmas tree will have a different meaning to me from this time forward.