Women in a Patriarchal World by Elaine Storkey

Author:Elaine Storkey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780281084081
Publisher: SPCK
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Facing our challenges today

Often, in our time, we wish that we had Jesus with us in body so we could call on him to exercise miraculous power. Inevitably, our experience of Christ is different from that of Mary. Yet many aspects of her attitudes and reactions are helpful to us in the way we grow in faith today. We can learn from her own boldness and trust, that Jesus is willing to work with any of us, in both mundane and global contexts. We can pray meaningfully into the most difficult areas of the world. Whether it’s the fundamental challenge of providing food and shelter for the dispossessed, the need to combat climate change or to contest the build-up of war, we can call upon Christ’s help and guidance. For we know we are working with the vision God gives us for humanity, not against it.

We can learn from Mary’s confidence that prayer puts us in deeper contact with God’s love. Mary’s comment to Jesus was a prayer that she did not need to repeat or build up, but simply needed to leave with him to bring whatever outcome was right. We too can intercede for people in situations where others might simply shrug their shoulders and say things are impossible. But we know that, even when the odds are stacked up high against a different outcome, God can intervene and change things.

Mary’s empathy was a valuable gift from God. The ability to experience the pain of others, to feel their distress, is a gift in short supply. For their pain becomes ours, and most of us would rather not have extra emotional burdens. Yet Mary had empathy in abundance, and her later suffering would become great. Today, God still gives the gift of feeling to those who ask. When we too stand alongside others in need, God can use us to bring encouragement and hope, so they know that the crisis is never too big to bear.

We don’t have to elevate Mary as the mother of Jesus to appreciate what she has to teach us. For, like us, she was human and subject to the same frailty and weaknesses. But we can allow her realization that God is in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, to shape our own outlook. And we can receive her prophetic insight into Christ’s saving and healing power as part of our lives also. At the very least, Mary’s story can inspire us to face, with faith, whatever the future has in store.

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