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Showing posts with label Women's Bible Study. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Women's Bible Study. Show all posts

Aug 31, 2015

Summer's End



School buses are rolling. The mid week fisher-kids on the ponds, have likely reeled in their hooks for the last time. We wont see much of them or their bikes, until next spring.The flag that was unfurled on Memorial Day will be flown until weather closes her down, like the end of a Broadway play. Summer’s nearly done. Though temperatures in our region will rage on through September, the pools will lose customers to football games and summer fruits will give way to pumpkins and gourds. So in these final days of a full moon shining bright in a sky still lit at eight o’clock at night, I’m pondering memories that marked the summer 2015…

Movies: 
Triple digit temps drive folks into theaters. Even with Netflix, its more fun to meet up with friends at the theater to escape the sun’s deep summer glare. A stunning remake of the classic film Far From the Madding Crowd was my favorite this summer. Filmed in the cooler climate of northern Britain, a smart woman, successfully manages her land and agricultural business in an era when few women had legal status to own land. Very British. Very inspiring.

Travel and Family Reunions:
When I fly over the university campus, the capital dome, and the azure blue lakes of my home town all manner of unseen forces pull me into that beloved region. I’m promise, my heart physically responds to the lakes and deep woods oxygen of that familiar place. Mix in the voices of family, the replication of my mother in my nieces, siblings eyes just like mine, same old tales told yet again, nephews with smiles identical to their dad’s and grandfather…summer reunions spent bare foot in the grass make lasting imprints on the heart.

Famous Women of Faith:
Do you, sisters in faith, do you respond deep in your bones when Christian education includes the leadership of Biblical women like Priscilla, Deborah, and Huldah? So blessed this summer by hearing those portions of God’s story that includes my gender. Women, His image bearers, fully valued and called by God to teach, preach, and prophesy. 

Benches and Books: 
...written about over here, because reading has been and always will be part of the tradition of summer. It goes way back to the Summer Reading Log that every kid filled out at the Public Library. You did that right?

Seasonally red,white, and blue will soon give way to orange, red, and yellow. The bold color of Pansies and Gerber Daisies will be memories as we plant Mums for the fall. Its time. Put a ribbon around summer’s memories and turn our faces to the respite and softness that is uniquely autumn.

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Joining the communities sharing at Chatting at the Sky, Give Me Grace: as well as Coffee for the Heart and Tell His Story. For the last two, click on their buttons below to join conversations of faith.

Aug 23, 2015

This is My Story





The sound came from the deepest portions of my soul. Internally I noted to self, how I sang with the full measure of my voice and heart that Sunday. 

Our church is leading a sermon series titled “Heroes of the Bible: Great Women of Faith”.

And I am so deeply affirmed and so profoundly grateful for the Biblical scholarship on the role of women in church leadership across Biblical history. 

Profoundly I say!

Huldah, Deborah, Ester, Priscilla, and Mary Magdalene: all chosen by God to voice God’s teachings and prophecies in times when women were chattel, property. When mere men gave them no voice. God gave us His image and uses our gifts and our voices to influence His church; and has, since earliest Biblical times. 

But back to the music that Sunday.
The hymn was “Blessed Assurance”.
You know it. 

Lyrics so familiar to generations of American Christians of the 20th and 21st centuries. 
Never in my lifetime of church education, in Choir School, in Sunday  School, VBS, Youth Group…never was it mentioned that this was written by Francis Crosby, [a female Francis] …Fanny Crosby, a woman. A blind woman of the 1800’s. A woman who wrote hundreds of hymns. A woman who met with U.S. Presidents. A woman who influenced her church.

Soul bursting recognition by our holy God, affirmed by my home church.
This is why I heard my voice sing with the full measure of its soul praising source.
God’s story includes me. My gender. 
Women, His image bearers, fully valued and called by God to teach, preach, and prophesy.

“This is my story, this is my song. Praising my savior all the day long.”

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Click on buttons below to link with these women's faith communities:

Sep 27, 2013

September Learning






September, a month traditionally associated with learning, did not disappoint.
School agers, educators, grad students, continuing ed adults, ballet, piano, even fall Bible study classes; nation wide, students of every phase and form, returned to endeavors of gathering knowledge. 
And then there are also those life long pursuits of deeper understanding and those serendipitous new ahas! that spark our daily lives.
Hence, this community of writers gathers over at Chatting at the Sky to rattle off what we’ve learned, some pearls of wisdom, or just plain whimsy that tickled our brains this month. Below, my notes on new wisdom and whimsy...

THE WISDOM:

I watched...
Seriously, with great admiration and learned the magnitude of courage, sacrifice, intellectual warfare, and God sustained determination that accompanied President LINCOLN’s passage of the thirteenth amendment that abolished slavery in our nation. I know this stunning movie  debuted last fall but its bound to be a classic worthy of every American’s attention.

I studied...
GIDEON, a moving Bible study that portrays human weakness as key designed to open something God has in mind specifically for you. Our weakness is meant to unleash the strength of God in our lives. Our weakness is the key God uses to unlock the door to His power. Gideon is written by Priscilla Shirer.

I read...
“...that when you pray, you are not starting the conversation from scratch, just remembering to plug back into a conversation that’s always in progress.” Anne Lamott, 


THE WHIMSY:

Husband taught me...
about Any List an app on our phones that allows us to share our grocery list. So honey does this mean you’re going to the grocery store?

Finally found the answer to...
Why God Made a Dog I promise, these photos and poem will make you smile.

And...
there was surprising personal learning that burst all around me during recent travels, and there was learning offered humbly through the stories of people whom I’m in prayer with, and there is learning that falls like rain as I walk in the morning.

This learning thing, its really very closely aligned with blessings. There is SO MUCH that comes our way that shapes our character, corrects our narrowness, expands our horizons, clarifies our insight; all that certainly qualifies as God’s good grace and blessing.
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Are curious about previous LEARNING posts? Just for grins here's the lists for July and August.

Apr 30, 2012

His Church Has Made Herself Ready



Let us rejoice and be glad 
and give him the glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.
Rev. 19: 7