Sweet Lord,
I am remembering that day,
so, so, so long ago
when I was about 14 or 15 and a total church geek.
Or, actually, could I have been 29 or 20 in college?
What I remember is sitting in my grandmother's kitchen.
That kitchen where I would sit at the table
and watch her make donuts and
pyrizhky, those meat-filled buns that were so good until I figured out what all that ground meat was ground FROM.
That kitchen table where she would feed us cheerios for breakfast and
fizzies for a treat.
It was at that table that she looked at me and asked,
"You will be a minister someday, maybe?"
That was first of many call-seeds planted in my soul,
and it came from a Ukrainian immigrant with a Seventh Day Adventist background but as far as I could tell she never went to church but she kneeled by her bed every night and said the Lord's Prayer.
During the Great Depression, she kept her family fed and farm afloat from selling the eggs from her chicken coop. I will take a seed like that any day.
But what I am trying to say, dear God, is that I am blown away by the myriad of seeds of call you fling across the world to call women to ministry. And I am so, so grateful. Because without my women colleagues, I wouldn't be half the pastor I am today. I am especially grateful for the RevGals, because I found them in a time of isolation, and over the years, deep connections have formed, dear friendships woven, and a dream team of colleagues advise me daily through the inter webs.
And this book, oh! this book! Your Spirit is threaded and splashed and hidden and bold throughout the stories and prayers in this book. They resonate with my experience of ministry, and of You. Thank You for bathing it and blessing it, and may it be a blessing in your kin-dom here, and in all the places you have flung your whispering seeds of "you will be a minister someday, maybe?"--no matter what or how that is interpreted.
Thanks be to you, Sweet Lord, thanks be.
Amen.
There's A Woman In the Pulpit can be purchased
through the publisher, Skylights Path or
Amazon where it the #1 New Release in Christian Books, and also at
Barnes and Noble. It is available in softcover or by e-book, but I highly recommend the soft cover (and I NEVER buy real live books anymore, but this is a book you are going to want to turn down the pages, hold, smile and cry over.)
