Archives: jean-williams

When wisdom marries folly

Everyday Ministry, Sola Panel

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If there’s ever been a mismatch, it was the union of Nabal and Abigail (1 Samuel 25). You can almost see the announcement: “Stupid, stubborn, surly skinflint marries brainy, brave, benevolent beauty”. It’s as if the characters of Folly and Wisdom stepped out of the pages of Proverbs and got hitched. Those TV advertisements with the clever wife rolling her eyes over her bumbling husband have nothing on this!

What can we learn from their ill-fated union? How can I be Wisdom rather than Folly? And what do I do if I’m Wisdom married to Folly?

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Love, sex and romance: Sexual purity for every woman

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A few years ago our women’s discussion group asked a friend to talk about sex within marriage. Some­­one brought a cake, and I remember lots of laughter—perhaps a little too much!—as we chatted about how to love our husbands sexually. The discussion leader answered our questions honestly and helpfully, but when someone asked about masturbation, she said, “I’d have to ask a guy that one”. The question this raised for me was, “Why? Is this really only an issue for men?”
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The God of the nobody

Life, Sola Panel

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This is the sixth post in Jean’s series on women in the Bible. (Read the first, second, third, fourth and fifth.)

Hannah is a nobody, the insignificant wife of an insignificant member of an insignificant tribe. Compared to Eve, mother of all living; Sarah, mother of God’s people; or Deborah, judge of Israel—who is she? Just a barren women loved by her husband but jeered at by a younger, fruitful wife (1 Sam 1:1-8).

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Stress-throwers and stress-absorbers

Life, Sola Panel

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Are you a stress-thrower or a stress-absorber?

A stress-thrower blames things on others and expresses stress in anger; a stress-absorber blames things on themselves and expresses stress in anxiety (I think I’ve got that right!). This useful distinction was taught to me by Tom Cannon, a chaplain I used to work with in university ministry. In our family, we have both stress-throwers and stress-absorbers.

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Deborah: a mother in Israel

Life, Sola Panel

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This is the fifth post in Jean’s series on women in the Bible. (Read the first, second, third and fourth.)

Deborah, judge of Israel, is a poster-girl for egalitarianism in Judges 4-5. She’s undoubtedly female, and she’s a leader of God’s people: a judge who delivers God’s rulings, and a prophetess who speaks God’s words. Like the other judges, she’s used by God to deliver his people when they turn from their idolatry and cry to him for rescue from their enemies. Her husband is virtually absent from her story and, if she had any children, they aren’t mentioned. If the New Testament seems to say that women shouldn’t teach or have authority in the church, surely Deborah shows that these restrictions are cultural and can be laid aside in our more enlightened society!

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Sisters for those with no sisters

Life, Sola Panel

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I grew up with one brother and no sisters. I love my brother, and never longed for a sister (unlike my daughter, who loves her three brothers, but has always wanted a twin sister). But I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a sister.

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A remarkable woman

Life, Sola Panel

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This is the fourth post in Jean’s series on women in the Bible. (Read the first, second and third.)

I met a remarkable woman the other day. To be honest, she’s not the kind of woman I normally feel comfortable with. She’s had an immoral past, a pagan background, and a life of change and crisis. She’s brave, shrewd and outspoken. I might as well come out and say it: she was once a prostitute. But I reckon she knows more about God than any number of women from safe Christian backgrounds (like me).

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A theology of milk and other ordinary things

Life, Sola Panel

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Last year I read this statement, tucked away in a footnote in a certain august magazine:

… Paul isn’t talking [in 1 Corinthians 10:31] about just any old eating and drinking (as if there is such a thing as a godly and an ungodly way to drink a glass of milk!), but about the specific issue of sharing in fellowship meals with unbelievers.1

The bit in brackets disturbed me (although, as I read on, I was reassured2) because I’m convinced that the Bible has a huge amount to say about seemingly inconsequential things like how to drink a glass of milk. (more…)

Girl crushes and a petulant princess

Life, Sola Panel

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This is the third post in a series Jean is doing on women in the Bible—the first two being about Eve.

Have you ever had a ‘girl crush’? You know, that admiring, platonic devotion women sometimes feel for other women. (The male version is, of course, the ‘boy crush’—most often expressed in adulation for preachers and thinkers like Don ‘The Don’ Carson and or John Piper.) Perhaps you adore Elisabeth Elliot, that beloved missionary. Perhaps you revere Susannah Wesley—she of the apron and the many children. Perhaps you idolize one of those regal, older women—someone you know who radiates calmness, wisdom and humility.

Sarah, wife of Abraham, seems like an ideal candidate for a girl crush. Her very name means ‘princess’. Her beauty was legendary (Gen 12:11). Many women (I’m one of them!) have been inspired by the Bible’s call to imitate her persevering faith and trusting submission (Heb 11:8-12, 1 Pet 3:1-7).

So when my Bible study group came to Sarah’s story, I think we were all expecting something pretty special. But we were unimpressed.

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Talking about predestination with children

Everyday Ministry, Sola Panel

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It’s the question that every Christian parent knows is coming sooner or later. I’m driving when six-year-old Thomas pipes up from the back seat. We’re alone, which doesn’t happen often in a family of six, so it’s a precious time for us. Deep thoughts are clearly running through his head: “Mummy, why do some people believe in Jesus and not others?”

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Motherhood and …

Life, Sola Panel

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This post follows on from Jean’s previous entry ‘Temptation and the garden’.

It’s time for some free association. I’ll give you a word. Close you eyes and tell me what springs to mind. Ready?

Motherhood.

What did you come up with? Kids? Caring? Apple pie? I’m pretty sure none of you came up with the word ‘salvation’! But in the Bible, motherhood and salvation go hand in hand.

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It is not death to die

Life, Sola Panel

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I was driving the kids home from school when I saw something you don’t expect on an arterial road heading into a major city. It was a horse-drawn carriage, taking up the left-hand lane, slowing the traffic to a crawl.

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Temptation and the garden

Life, Sola Panel

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All our temptations are garden temptations.

I don’t usually talk much about gardening when I lead Bible studies, but recently during our study on Genesis 3, I asked, “What does the Garden of Eden show us about God?”

The answer? God is abundantly generous. He didn’t give Adam and Eve a dry loaf and a cup of water; he gave them a beautiful garden brimming with varied, wonderful fruitful plants to eat and enjoy (Gen 2:9).

And what was God’s word to the people he’d made? “Eat! Eat freely from every tree in the garden!”1 There was only one tree they weren’t to eat from, and that was “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:16-17). In other words, the only thing they weren’t to do was to rip God’s authority away from him, and decide good and evil for themselves.

But that’s not the way Eve saw it.

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Kids@church/Click: Some great material for your children’s Sunday School

Review, Sola Panel

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I teach Sunday School for children regularly, but I don’t always have the time and energy to write my own lessons. So last year I found myself in the market for Sunday School material.

Thanks to a friend trawling through the shelves at a Christian bookshop, what I discovered was kids@church, put out by Youthworks in conjunction with CEP. (In Britain, it’s published as Click by The Good Book Company). I suspect that lots of churches in Sydney are familiar with this material, but many other churches aren’t.

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