Many women in the Bible suffer, caught in the midst of unimaginably harsh choices and pain. Think of the woman in Judges 19, whom we'll look at today. Most Christians do not know her story, and are surprised to find it in scripture. We’ve swept the pieces of it—and her—under the collective Judeo-Christian rug for 3000 years now. And she's not the...
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Let’s be real. Everyone knows the story of Abraham, but how about the comparable story of the widow of Zarephath? Both were about sacrifice and beloved sons. Abraham delivered his son Isaac to the funeral pyre—and would have killed the boy, had not God’s angel intervened. The widow of Zarephath also saw her son on death’s doorstop, although—unlike Abraham—such a condition...
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Unlike most of the world, God does not throw away old people. Nor does God assign women to lesser or unimportant roles. A robust example of being valued--as a woman and an old person--is found in Luke 1. Here, the classic story about Elizabeth, the relative to whom Mary ran when she was newly pregnant with Jesus, is brims over with life and...
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For the better part of forty years, Mary didn’t do anything for me. And that sounds like something a loser would say: “Hey, Mary didn’t do anything for me…” Except, of course, she did something that no one has ever done; something that no one else will ever do. She gave birth to Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the Redeemer. Surely...
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40,000 human skulls. They haunt me. Six weeks ago, I was in Europe, celebrating twenty-five years of marriage and visiting the towns along the Danube River. It was a wonderful trip—yet what I can’t get out of my mind is the sight of 40,000 neatly stacked human skulls, in the Sedlac Ossuary in Kutna Hora, a small town in the Czech...
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She had freckles on her face. She kept standing up to tug her short-shorts down; they pinched her, she said. She told me her name was “Josi,” without an “e.” And that she was eleven, in middle school, and that her school was “really safe — “that nothing ever happens there.” Her long legs would make her a good tree-climber. I hope she...
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Where do mothers find the strength to let their children go? One of the more dynamic women in scripture shows up this Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary: Hannah. Known for her great bargain with God, her story is full of emotion, pathos, and yearning. She also leaves us with a range of questions similar to ones faced by women in...
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There’s a woman I know living by herself in a small house in Wisconsin, who has known great sorrow. Some twenty years ago, her former husband was flying a small plane. In that plane were her cherished loved ones: her daughter, her son-in-law and three grandchildren, ranging in age from fifteen to ten. The plane crashed; all were killed. In that...
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Imagine an old woman, in about the year 1007 BCE, living alone in the Jezreel Valley, with only a hillside burrow for a home. Some call her a witch. Others use the world medium; others a necromancer. King Saul has said mediums should be killed, but townspeople still sneak away to see her under the cloak of night. Most jobs are closed to...
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Chances are you didn't hear the story of Tamar (Genesis 38) in Sunday School or at summer camp. Boldness in the face of adversity is the name of the game for many women in the Bible, and Tamar is right on the top of that list. One of Jesus' awesome female ancestors, she is brave, determined, clever--and a bit scandalous. A woman...
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