Ah, young women! How different the world looks to you.
We had a nostalgic worship experience, stepping back in time, using the old Service Book and Hymnal. As my tongue wrapped itself around the “thees” and “thous,” I became a little mellow for the days of my youth. That is, until Jill, the acolyte beside me, said, “Yeah, but there’s all this stuff about ‘men’.”
To 14-year-old Jill saying that Jesus had come down from heaven “for us men and for our salvation” just didn’t make sense. Then I remembered as a youngster, I couldn’t be an acolyte like Jill. And all the pastors then were men.
Yes, the world does look very different to young women. I rejoice in the young women around me. Especially the very young, like Rebecca, a 5-year-old who told me that she wants to be a pastor someday. What a wonderful world of possibilities await her!
This message is adapted from “Give Us This Day” written by Donna Hacker Smith in the July/August 1992 issue of Lutheran Woman Today (now Gather) magazine.