From My Heart

On any given day, on a main road in the town next to mine, there is a young man who pulls his car onto the shoulder of the road, unloads a sound system, and then preaches to the rush hour traffic as loud as he possibly can. He's been doing this for close to 20 years that I know of. I've never heard an entire sermon because I'm usually enroute somewhere and just passing by, but the jist of it is, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!" Lots of people think he's crazy. Many would say that he does not have the most effective witnessing technique. Possibly....but what he does have...is boldness. One tends to think in our oh so proper culture that screaming the message of God from the side of the road is just not how it's done. I bet he is in good company, though. Jonah, for instance, or Jeremiah or even John the Baptist...Men called of God who went through the countryside proclaiming His message with boldness. Men who didn't fit the proper religious...

Okay, so today is one of those days where we just have to get personal and have one of those "girls only" kind of chats... Do you ever REALLY think about what life was like for women in Jesus' day? How the culture REALLY treated women? All of us have had to deal with that wonderful hormonal cycle we share on a monthly basis. For many, it is not the most pleasant time of the month...but can you imagine being hormonal and PMSing and being ostracized at the same time? Talk about depression! The book of Leviticus (chap 15) describes how a woman who is bleeding is to be treated and makes it clear that she is unclean for a period of days. Because of the potential of accidentally becoming unclean by touching a menstruating woman, most men just avoided women in public altogether. I know that God created these laws for the health of the people, but, for me, this would have been a hard pill to swallow. I say all of this because tonight I read the story of the woman who had be...