by David Anderson
is the only outed person at the dinner table. Simon the Pharisee invites Jesus to dinner, but somehow a “woman of the city” catches wind of the soiree and sneaks in the back door carrying “an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing at Jesus’ feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, […]
by David Anderson 4 Comments Filed Under: Faith/Trust, Forgiveness, Freedom, Grace, Gratitude, Intimacy, Lent, Love, Mercy, Uncategorized
used to be Saul, and the name change—signaling a new beginning—may have been the only way he could have gone on, could have lived with himself. We first meet him at a murder. Young Stephen is being stoned for his faith in Jesus, and the accusers who took off their coats to limber up for […]
by David Anderson 2 Comments Filed Under: Change, Character, Conversion, Epiphany, Faith/Trust, Forgiveness, Freedom, Grace, Gratitude, Identity, Lent, Mercy, Repentance, Surrender, Transformation, Uncategorized
suffered from bullying and depression (1 Samuel 1: 1-28). Like her matriarchal sisters, Sarah and Rachel, Hannah is a “barren woman.” In an agrarian culture that prized children and demanded them of women, infertility is seen as a curse. Something’s wrong with you. In the Bible—and until recently—infertility was a woman’s problem, never a man’s. […]
by David Anderson 2 Comments Filed Under: Faith/Trust, Faithfulness, Lent, Surrender, Uncategorized
is known only as a bathing beauty, as the voluptuous partner in King David’s famously tragic tryst. Like many silent women in the Bible, however, we have to work to recover her story (2 Samuel 11 & 12). The king is strolling on his roof when he sees her, bathing. But this isn’t likely our […]
by David Anderson 4 Comments Filed Under: Character, Faith/Trust, Hope, Lent, Uncategorized
was dying not of her hemorrhages but of her deadly isolation. Here’s her story. “Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years; and though she has spent all she had on physicians, no one could cure her” (Luke 8: 43-48). Almost certainly this patient was suffering from menorrhagia, excessively […]
by David Anderson 5 Comments Filed Under: Community, Faith in Action, Faith/Trust, Healing, Lent, Suffering
lived in a world without a past to go on. First Woman. She had no predecessors to look to. Imagine this. Eve appears one day in a lush garden, having no idea where she came from. There’s only one other human, a man, and he is her husband. She reaches for too much of this […]
by David Anderson Leave a Comment Filed Under: Faith/Trust, Family, Forgiveness, Grace, grief, Healing, Hope, Lent
On Saturdays our companions are musicians. To accompany all those we’ve followed through Wild Places this week, I can’t think of a better song than “Poor Wayfaring Stranger.” It speaks of someone wandering, far from home. And it’s sung by Rhiannon Giddens, an Afro-Irish singer whose rendition will rend your heart. Watch and listen, and […]
by David Anderson 4 Comments Filed Under: Faith/Trust, Heaven, Justice/Peace, Lent
is a heroine of faith because she aspired to something greater than survival. We only meet this Moabite woman because an Israeli family, in the middle of a devastating famine, flees Bethlehem in search of food. Naomi and her husband Elimilech arrive in Moab, their two sons marry Moabite women—Orpah and Ruth—and then all the […]
by David Anderson 4 Comments Filed Under: Belief, Character, Conversion, Faith/Trust, Faithfulness, Family, Hope, Lent, Salvation, Vocation/ Calling