Jesus is Lord
"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."
This was written quite some time ago, before the internet and digital cameras.
Even so, I think it is a useful allegory.
"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."
Once upon a time there was a little girl who had more than her fair share of curiosity. She loved to explore and she loved to ask questions. She especially liked nature.
When she was seven, she and her mother went shopping together for a birthday present for her father. The family did not have much money so the girl and her mother did their shopping entirely in the cheaper stores. Finally they ended up in a discount book shop where the girl's eyes settled on a glossy coffee table book of flowers.
All over the world, women in just about every religion experience an inner conflict.
Something inside is telling them to do more with their abilities and their lives.
But men in their respective religions tell them to mind their manners - and their place.
Well, what I have to say to such women is that the something inside telling you to do more is your Creator. It is the Holy Spirit speaking very clearly and persuasively to you.
Stop seeing the fuzzy bits and look for the bumblebee.
It was the colours that initially attracted the girl, then the fine detail of the close-up photographs of the flowers. Each page was entirely taken up by the picture of one individual flower.
The girl's mother and father, however, were not avid readers and did not very often buy books, so the book of close-up photographs of flowers remained the sole occupant of the coffee table for many years.
The girl, who liked the colours and the flowers, returned to the book many times as she was growing up. Its exciting, almost living colours took her back to the comfortable and safe days of childhood.
It was not until late in her teens that she began to notice something a little strange about the book. She knew that when taking photographs with a close-up lens there was an extremely narrow field of vision and that anything other than the object being focused upon would appear blurred and fuzzy.
And amid the blur surrounding each flower, and always towards the lower left-hand corner, there seemed to be a kind of shadow, a darker smudge of fuzziness.
The girl, still curious, and a bit precocious, determined she would solve the mystery of the dark smudge.
From the inside back cover of the book she obtained the names of the publisher and the photographer. A few phone calls told her the publisher had gone out of business years before. That explains why we got the book at the discount store, she thought.
The photographer was harder to track down. But she persisted. After exhausting the Yellow Pages and the patience of more than one Directory Enquiries operator, she made contact with a photographers' society where the photographer was indeed remembered by the membership secretary (who has herself due to retire next month)
"Moved to Devon at least ten years ago," said the lady about to retire. "Never had a phone. Doesn't like them. Always hard to get hold of."
The girl got the Devon address. There was a Bank Holiday coming up and since she had recently accumulated both a driver's licence and an old, but restored, dark green Morris Minor Traveller with new ash wood. She decided to drive to Devon and resolve the enigma in person.
Mostly for women, but also for men, the "Gender Verses" do not need to be feared.
Neither do the men who mis-translate and mis-use them.
As a tickler example, consider 1 Timothy 2:11.
My NIV says, "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission."
The translators and virtually all commentators want you to see this as a woman being told that when a woman learns she does so only as a concession from male "leaders" and only and always in subordination to men.
Ha!
Now shift your focus.
Treat the verse as two parts. "A woman should learn" is a radical command from Paul and it empowers women to learn just as men did in a culture where women usually were excluded from learning.
"in quietness and full submission" is Paul saying women should learn in exactly the same way as men. When a young man was sent off to learn from his tutor he would be told to behave and learn "in quietness and full submission".
See the bumblebee?
The photographer's dilapidated cottage was on the edge of a small town on a hill not far from the sea. (Not the best of ocean views, but an ocean view nonetheless)
He was digging the garden when she drove up and seemed surprised but pleased to have a visitor. Over a cup of tea in the living room the girl produced the book of colour photographs of flowers and asked about the shadows in the lower left hand corners.
"Out takes!" the photographer said, then digressed with the story of his career, a story that took two more cups of tea.
He had ended up in industrial photography, taking pictures of machines and lamps and nuts and bolts and bolts of cloth. "I was never very good with people, you see," he said, "not personable, couldn't make people relax like the good portraitists could."
"And the shadows?" pressed the girl at long last, unable to face another cup of tea.
"Out takes," he said again. "Wait here and I'll get you the ones I wanted to use. Publisher decided against them. Chose the out takes. Don't know why, really."
The retired photographer disappeared into a room at the back of the cottage and began to rummage. The girl sat and leafed through her book while the sound of rattling and dust blowing came from the other room.
He emerged with an ancient file folder and a satisfied grin. He pulled out a handful of colour prints and spread them on the table before the girl.
She half recognized them. There were all the colours from the coffee table book. The yellow of the rose, the magenta and scarlet of the fuscias, the purple of the petunias: all those vibrant colours that brought back the comfortable and familiar feelings of childhood.
Except that now the flowers were just a blur in the background and in the lower left foreground of each frame of pungent colour was the clear portrait of a bumblebee's face.
"Had a thing about bumblebees, you see. Wanted to call it The Bumblebee Book. Went to a lot of trouble too. Not easy to get a bumblebee to pose."
The reconditioned motor of the rolling green relic took the girl back to London without trouble. On the passenger's seat beside her lay the file folder enveloping the portraits, a gift from a grateful professional.
Amazing, she thought, amid the building traffic as she neared London, how a fraction of a shift in focus and a publisher's decision had changed both her perception of the photographer's intent and the effect it had had on her life as she was growing up.
She would enjoy her new collection of fuzzy faces. She would frame them and put them all over the west wall of her room.