Women and war in King David’s backyard

Women and War 4 War: it can happen anywhere, sneaking across what seem like safe borders, often on a moment’s notice. Whether domestic or international, its effects shock us. We are never the same, for women often bear terrible side effects of war, bruises that last a lifetime. Some 2000 years ago, such pain and suffering came to ten women in Jerusalem....

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Deborah: Leading from the front

Bible Women and War 1 Warfare has been a constant as long as human beings have roamed the earth. The sad truth is this: war happens. We do everything we can to avoid it, but combat occurs, both in distant parts of the world, and in our own towns (Orlando, Beirut, Minneapolis, Aleppo, New York, etc.). What might we learn from Bible women regarding warfare and conflict?...

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Martha of Bethany: Finding the Main Course

Why does Martha of Bethany have such a bad reputation? Because she’s so organized? Because she complained to Jesus? (I like that about her; it takes some chops to complain to The Guy.) Here’s the well-known part of her story (Luke 10:38-42): Martha is cooking dinner for Jesus and the disciples. Sister Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening. Martha needs...

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Mary Magdalene: Peering into the darkness

One of the things I like about Mary Magdalene is her willingness to look into the darkness—whether it be her own demons or the darkness of the empty tomb.  In John 20, my favorite account of the resurrection, Mary Magdalene sees that the stone blocking the entrance to the tomb has been moved. She runs to tell Peter, who looks inside, sees nothing, and returns home. She...

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Lent Three: Loving Leonard

My mother-in-law always grieved Leonard, her tall and handsome father. She was three when he died; he was twenty-eight. He was a millworker in the woolen mills of Lawrence:  young and healthy one week and gone the next. Family history says that he went into Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston in 1918, thirty long miles away, and "didn’t come out." Best...

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