Dec 2nd - Women

I've been really busy this past couple of weeks - partly because I volunteered myself to do a Nativity  Treasure Hunt  for our neighbouring town's Christmas lights switch on which is happening today.  I've painted seven big pictures telling the story of the first Christmas , about six hundred baby Jesus stones to give to each child when they have completed the hunt, and composed the question cards they take round with them.   Last night I was out with other volunteers decorating Santa's grotto. Earlier in the week I was out at a music practice for the singing I shall be doing as the lights are switched on.   Today Im at a course in church all day before the lights switch on event which starts late afternoon.   Its all a bit mad.  Fun though.

As Ive been painting nativity pictures and baby Jesus stones I've been struck again by the role of women in the life of the Saviour of the world.    A couple of years ago - around the time of the outcry over female genital mutilation - I felt God speak to me about women across the world.  He seemed to be saying that He was about to do something global and mighty which was going to bring a dramatic change to the status of women.  I felt something of His anger at the way in which so many millions of His daughters have been treated for so long.   And I'm not really a feminist - I mean, this is not something I'd been thinking about or had a bee in my bonnet over.  I just suddenly felt a sea change was coming.    And I look back over the past couple of years and see that something has indeed started.   All the recent Harvey Weinstein stuff is indicative of the fact that women are beginning to become empowered to stand up and say ' enough'.

I love how, in an age where women were bought and sold as goods, stoned or cast out for even tiny so called misdemeanours, and valued by society so little,  the nativity story casts women in a central role.  Mary and Elizabeth are favoured by God, sought out by angels , blessed with miracles.  They are young and old.  They are ordinary and extraordinary.  They are doubting and believing.  They are incredibly brave.

When God made Eve He took her out of Adam's side so that he could call her bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.  .   In the nativity we see the opposite happening.  Instead of the woman being brought out of the man, now the Son of Man is being brought out of Mary - somehow this completes something which was started in the Garden of Eden  The story has come full circle.  There is something so inherently interconnected about men and women.  We really can't manage without each other.  We are made of the same stuff and that stuff is divine.     It's a bit of a mystery and Im sure Im not explaining it very well.    Suffice it to say man and womankind are of equal importance in the God story but sadly this has not often been reflected in the world.  By and large the world has been run by men for men......  until now.   But things are changing.  Only last year we had the tantilising possibility of having a female US president, a female British prime minister and a female German chancellor.   ( as the song says, two out of three ain't bad :) )  But its not really about women in high places.  God is about to release the woman on the zero hours contract, the woman in the abusive relationship, the girl in the arranged marriage and the refugee lawyer who is now sweeping the streets.  2000 years ago He visited an old barren woman and a young teenage peasant girl and told them that they had found favour with God.  I believe He is still in the business of speaking His promises to womankind.  And when He speaks, things happen.




The good thing is that when women find their rightful place in the world men will discover that everything suddenly works better for them too.