SD-6: The sura for today is labeled: Women - #4.
I understand that even today women do not have equality when it comes to pay in the workplace. I don't like that - but it is a reality that seems to have no end. In line with that, I know that within the Church, there are some partners that will not allow women to serve as do men. We come up with many reasons - none of them of any worth in my opinion. Women cannot be priests we are told by some - because Jesus had all male apostles. Well, when the men did not have the courage or the wit about them to stay alongside Jesus, there were women. When God acted and raised Jesus from the dead - the men were back in town trembling and they missed being the ones who were the first witnesses of the resurrection. Although, just as we see in the Qu'ran, women do not count as men. Take this passage from today's sura: Concerning your children, God commands you that a son should have the equivalent share of two daughters. If there are only daughters, more than two should share two-thirds of the inheritance, if one, she should have half.
This male and female divide that we see in all the Scriptures of the Abrahamic faiths belongs in another time. Does it really have anything to do with the God we call one - and - God alone? Does it really have anything to do with a devotion to God - to will one thing? Maybe in the ancient world.
If we cannot see the image of God in both men and women and understand that together they make life full and bring renewal and life, then give it up. I know that some read material from the various Scriptures and say that women are honored. And yet, if that woman does not give birth to a boy - bring on another woman. I have seen this since I was a child. A couple would have a girl and then another girl and even in front of the girls they would talk about the sadness of not having a boy. Some women would even have to risk their health and well-being in order to keep trying to bring forth a male child.
To such notions, we all must hang our heads for a moment and repent of such thoughts and actions that hold one person above another because of their gender. Yes, in ancient days many children were needed to carry on the family name and males were needed to keep the family name going. But what if the family is the whole of God's people. The individual family name is nothing.
Connection: What will it take to experience this God that is claimed to be One and yet devote our lives to a way that is not cluttered with sexual bias and rules for primitive societies. Rules are wonderful guides - but those rules must change as time passes and our lives together are transformed into life that was not previously known. We do not abandon rules as though they do not count - but when they do not serve our life together what good are they? Old rules can be changed and made into new guides and aids that build us up - all of us - as one.
Blessed are you, God of Mercy, for your continue to give birth that is greater than what we can see. You deliver us into new lands and offer us new life - it is always life that unfolds with grace and mercy extended to all. Amen.
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