What if?

What if,

at the start of the first millennium AD,

God had sent her daughter

to bring the message of God's love

to Israelites and Gentiles?

No. That idea is too far-fetched.

A society steeped in patriarchal traditions

would have despised, rejected, and mocked her,

would have made sure that she was denied every opportunity

to carry out her parent's will.

After all, that's how they treated her son.

But what if,

at the start of the third millennium AD,

God sent her daughter

to bring again the message of God's love

to all the world from north to south, from east to west?

Is that idea still too far-fetched?

Many societies are still steeped in patriarchal traditions,

but some, including ours, claim to be gender sensitive,

to promote equal rights and opportunities for women

   and men.

Would we hear the Good News from God's daughter

Do we hear the Good News from God's daughters, 

   our sisters,

or do we regard them as less capable, less competent,

less able to minister to us

than the men we have traditionally known as our ministers?

What if,

we think on these things,

and ponder them in our hearts,

and determine that, by God's grace,

we will support God's daughters, our sisters, in

   every way we can, as they carry out their call

to preach and to teach, to counsel and to heal,

to love and to serve God's people?

And what if,

we resolve, by God's grace,

to take time to hear again God's call to us,

daughters of God,

to love and to serve God's people

in the places where we live and work,

whatever that may mean for each one of us?

Margaret Randle was editor of the South African Methodist Women ‘s Network magazine, NetWord.za, for eight years, and occasionally contributed la the magazine as well. This poem was first published in the October 1999 issue of that magazine to challenge congregations to revisit their prejudices about women ministers at the beginning of the 2lst century.