lent 24 - international women's day

In August 2014 there was a lot in the news about female genital mutilation.  Somehow it had come to the attention of the world's media and a cry started to go up demanding an end to this barbaric and cruel practice.   It seemed to come from nowhere and stayed in the news for weeks and weeks.   I was listening to yet another broadcast when I was in the car one day and I felt a huge surge in my spirit as though God was saying ' ENOUGH'.    I got the sense that it wasnt just about FGM, but it was about the status of women across the world.  It had not been long since the Boko Haram kidnappings and other things were rising to the surface to highlight the plight of women.   I felt really strongly that God was about to do something.  He was about to turn the tide for women in the same way that He dismantled communism and the Berlin wall.   I wrote a poem

The Emancipation of Eve

If you hit me I will bruise
If you cut me I will bleed
If you refuse to educate me
I will not protest your creed
I'll comply through brute coercion
or through subtle cultural norms
Second class, invisible
teach me tricks and I'll perform
But know this : I am worth more
And one day you will realise
Soon to be unshackled I
shall manifest before your eyes
my strength and beauty, power and wisdom
Intellect and mettled grace
bone of bone and flesh of flesh
is stepping up to take her place.
Adam you are incomplete
whilst I am tethered to your bed
We are destined to be equals
me, your glory - you, my head.       (28.8.14 © Caz Hamilton)


Since that time three years ago I have watched as God has started to move across the globe to change something fundamental in the way that women are viewed, respected, treated and recognised.   It is really a powerful thing that is going on.  It is a seismic shift in attitudes and behaviour and it is going to have a huge impact going forward.  We are so culturally acclimatised to everything being geared to male dominance that I think we are all going to find it hard to adjust to a new order of things.  But God is no longer going to allow more than half the population of the world to be undervalued and not allowed to reach their God given potential.

In the past couple of years we have seen a move towards closing the gender pay gap.  The abuse of women in the workplace has been exposed.  FGM has been brought into the open and is increasingly being outlawed.  Even yesterday the Saudi Prince said he was considering allowing women to drive.   China has abandoned it's one child policy.  More and more women are standing for office in governments around the world and more and more countries are placing equal value on educating girls as well as boys.   Small changes are happening everywhere - I listen to a programme called The Life Scientific on Radio 4 every week.   Until recently the people interviewed have almost always been men.   The past few weeks all the scientists interviewed have been women.  And they have been women doing groundbreaking and extraordinary work in many cutting edge fields of science and engineering.   Watch carefully in the next few months - there are changes coming in the media which will reflect the changes society is now demanding.   Less objectification, less airbrushing, more older women on television, more female voices, less gender stereotyping.


This is all good for men.  When God created Eve He took her out of Adam and made her his equal.  Together they were supposed to tend the garden and walk with God.  It was only after the fall that the relationships got skewed.  God ascribes different roles to men and women but not different values.  We have allowed the snake in the grass to shame us into ascribing blame, abrogating responsibility and deceiving each other.   When women throw off the shackles that have held them back they will be able to walk beside the men in their lives and together they will finally be able to do the job that God has called them to do.

As Im typing this I can feel God saying that He is going to bring a parity and a unity between man and womankind which will elicit from Him a huge blessing to achieve tasks.  As men allow women to take their place alongside, they will suddenly find that two heads are better than one.  Because that is how God always intended it should be.  Businesses will prosper as boardrooms become equally shared between men and women.  Churches will experience new blessing as they start to lay down some of their traditions and weak theology and allow women to function in their gifts and callings.   This is not a small or local thing.  This is a worldwide shaking of the foundations.

As we move into end times the church is going to come into her own.  God needs every person to be fully operating in their appointed roles in order to meet the huge needs of our hurting broken world.  People are going to turn to Jesus in great numbers and we are going to need all hands on deck.   Girls who are being born today will grow up and wonder what on earth was going on for all those centuries past.  They will become women who are in every way seen as, and treated as, equal to men.  Gender discrimination will be viewed with the same sense of disgust as slavery is viewed now.   Exciting times to be alive.  Exciting times to be a woman.  Come Lord Jesus.