Evening Prayer: Women and Church Leadership

Gracious God, who spoke through the prophet Amos with a voice that shook the comfortable silence of an unjust world,

Tonight I bring before You the women in our churches who have carried so much for so long — the ones who taught us scripture before we could read, who organized every potluck and hospital visit, who held dying hands and baptized grieving hearts with prayer, yet were told their calling had a ceiling. Lord, You declared, "Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream." A river does not ask permission to flow. It moves where the ground is lowest, where the need is deepest.

I think of Lottie Moon, that five-foot Baptist woman who walked into the interior of China when mission boards said it couldn't be done, who literally starved herself so others could eat, and whose offering still funds the work of the Gospel around the world. I think of the women at the empty tomb — the first preachers of the resurrection — entrusted with the most important sermon ever delivered, and believed by no one but You.

Father, forgive us where we have dammed Your river. Forgive us where tradition became an idol and power became a substitute for servanthood. Give me eyes to recognize giftedness wherever Your Spirit plants it, and the courage to say so out loud.