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Rejoice, Highly Favoured One, The Lord Is With You; Blessed Are You Among Women!” Luke 2:28
by Samoelijaona Rasolonjanahary
One Friday evening, during our group devotion, a woman was complaining about the places of women in general in the Bible. She said: “How come that women are always given bad roles in the Bible?” And I responded her that it is not always that way, in some occasions God caught men in worst situations too. Her assumption said that God is biased in dealing with people, especially in considering gender.
In this article, I do not pretend to preach but to take every one of us to think about that question of gender in the Bible. I will not cite all the cases but a few of them. At the end I will bring up to our attention nowadays factual situations about gender in our community and especially in our Christian society. This is to say that the blessing of the angel to Mary is for every individual, man or woman as long as we accept God’s gift to us; “the Lord is with you, blessed are you among” God’s people.
Concerning men especially, in the Bible, I give you here some men caught in awkward if not bad situations:
Cain, led by jealousy, killed his brother. He is the first murderer in human history. (Gen. 4. 8) King David committed assassination and adultery. 2 Samuel 11. But he repented. He was forgiven by God though after heartfelt repentance. Judas betrayed Jesus. Mark 14.43, 44 Elymas, a sorcerer who tried to turn a proconsul from the faith. Acts 13. 8 – 11
In the following, comes a list of some women with their evil deeds:
Eve allowed herself to be misguided by the devil. Gen. 3. 6 Jezebel, a foreign wife of king Ahab fought God through his prophet Elijah. 1 King 19 A zealous servant girl wanted to get Peter into trouble in John 18. 17 Sapphira in Acts 5. 9, 10, tested the Spirit with her husband.
Now, let us look at some good women of God as related in the Bible:
In Judges 4 we read the story of Deborah, the judge. In the same chapter we may read the facts of Jael, another woman of God. In 1 Samuel 2, we may read the story of the prayerful Hannah, the mother of Samuel. We cannot forget faithful Mary, the wife of Joseph, she accepted humbly to be instrument of our salvation in giving birth to Jesus. Luke 1. In Acts 9. 36 – 42, we may read about Dorcas.
Some good men in the Bible:
Sometimes, some people mistake the prophet Elijah as the Messiah, but he just carried out what God wanted him to do, he is not Jesus. Read about him from 1 Kings 17 onwards. Have you heard of the prophet Zechariah who lost his life for the sake of God? This fact is not mentioned in the Scriptures, but read his book. We all know about the Apostle Paul, especially about his conversion, know him more in the New Testament from Acts 9 onwards. When you talk about Paul, you will not miss Timothy, a good servant who preached the Gospel zealously. Read for example his book.
Above I have given you sixteen examples from the Bible, they are examples but not the only ones. They just show us that the Bible is not biased in the question of gender.
60 We might have noticed that the general trend in the Christian church is that there are more women than men in church activities. This photo shows a choir in the FJKM parish of Avaratr’Andohalo, a Presbyterian Church. Photo by Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar.
Nowadays, we witness some good servants of God at work, women and men of faith, working in the ministry of Jesus with courage and boldness. Look around you to see men and women preachers. You may hear of women and men missionaries, leaving their countries to spread the Gospel of Jesus. You hear from the news, martyrs from both genders who died for the sake of Christ. If you look at your hymnbook, you may see there the names of male and female song-writers. In your community, you may see people of goodwill who feed the hungry, witnessing Christ in his compassion, there are more women in there than men. In the area of healthcare, you know some Christian male and female doctors, nurses and other paramedics working tirelessly and voluntarily for the wellbeing of the people of God. You might have read the stories of male and female scientists standing in their faith at their works. Do not forget the teachers who dispense the knowledge of Christ through their works.
All of these examples are given to you to show that God does not look at gender when He has work to do. He looks at your talents, your availability, at your willingness to do his work and especially He looks at your faith. Nowadays women from almost the whole Christian world celebrate and pray together on the first Friday of March in what is known as the WORLD DAY of PRAYER.
So “Rejoice, highly favoured one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women”; this tiding is for all of us, good servants of God. Do not get lost in finding out what God is doing, do not judge Him. Just do your work. And before you think of the bad things, look at the good ones. What is important, do your part in preaching the Good News at your side.
We praise the Lord for those who are doing well, men, women, or children. HALLELUJAH!!!
