I will admit off the bat that this asn't my favorite Brennan Manning book, though I kind of feel like that's his own fault since he set the bar so high for himself, haha. But like every Manning book, there are still plenty of great takeaways.
I have a feeling that this review will just be a series of out of context quotes, and I realize that that can be not helpful so I will do my best to provide some context!
Starting us off, Manning isn't afraid to throw it down:
For many people in the church, Christianity is not Good News. The Gospel is not the glad tidings of freedom and salvation proclaimed by Christ Jesus, but a rigid code of dos and dont's, a tedious moralizing, a list of minimum requirements for avoiding the pains of hell.
This is not how it should be.
During Jesus' time on earth, he constantly demonstrated his love and tenderness; especially towards people that society at the time or even know, frankly, would have deemed....ew. Us included.Here's a couple of quotes that talk about his love for his people:
In Jesus stories, divine forgiveness doesn't depend on our repentance or our ability to love our enemies or on our doing only heroic, virtuous deeds. God's forgiveness depends only on the love out of which he has fashioned the human race.... But the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do. And this, of course, is almost too incredible for us to accept.
and this is actually a quote of a quote
We must remember, he proclaims, that we don not earn God's forgiveness by our sorrow or by our reparation. God's love is given. It is always there, waiting patiently for us. We need only to turn to him and receive it. He is pleased with out efforts but even more pleased with us. That's why He made us. You cannot earn God's love, because He gave it to you before you started to earn it.
One thing that I love about Manning's books is that he often tucks these short little couple a sentence stories into larger stories and some of them make me go "WHAT? NO, WHAT? I MUST KNOW MORE?" or they just make me sob like the little monk who used to be an acrobat in the circus. Oh, little circus monk. So the story for this book that garnered a big reaction from me was even shorter. So in the Bible there's passages about how Jesus talks about how he is going ahead to prepare a place for us and that he will return to take you with me so that you may be where I am. Manning knew a deaf man named Charlie who "at the moment of his death said "For the first time I can hear someone coming." Ah! What? Tell me more?!
There is also little mini study guides at the end of each chapter and and the very last chapter is kind of a commentary on Christmas and it's weird because it almost seems weirdly out of place because it kind of feels like a Lent book more than an Easter book, but it's not like they aren't all connected, haha.
Feminism is a divisive concept for a lot of people. It seems like no one can quite agree on what it is. Is it women marching in marches wearing pink hats and "standing with planned parenthood"? Is it women who think that they should be paid the same for doing the same job as a male coworker? Can you be prolife and be a feminist? Do you have to hate men to be a feminist? Are these things mutually exclusive? Here's how I define feminism for myself (and it's also the subtitle of the book #convenient): It's the radical notion that women are people too. You know who else thought women were full blown, totally developed, worth talking to people? Jesus. And that's why we are here.
Women were CLUTCH in Jesus time here on earth. From the very beginning to the very end. He was born to a young woman who, in her time and place in society, was pretty inconsequential but through her willing obedience to her God changed the world. The women at the tomb were the first people that Jesus appeared to after his resurrection. Not his anxious, overwrought disciples that were hiding in a room. The woman who at great personal risk wanted to show their love for Him by finishing his burial preparations. He raised Peter's mother in law from the dead. He frequented Mary and Martha's house and mourned with them at the passing of their brother Lazarus (I mean, it had a happy ending so that was good). While Jesus was in agony on the cross He makes sure that his mother is taken care of ("Behold your son, Behold your mother").
None of these are actions of Someone who thinks that women are ANY LESS than anyone else.
You also can't deny the incredible women who have been moved to do amazing things because of their love for Jesus, here's a teeny tiny teeny tiny list. Including links to their wikipedia pages in case you haven't heard of a few like me: Mother Teresa (duh), Amy Carmichael, Dorothy Day, Corrie ten Boom, Gladys Aylward, Evangeline Booth. (There's even a shoutout to Susanna Wesley, my namesake, who I've never run across in print before and that made my heart so happy). And those are even talking about the organizations mentioned in this book that are trying to end modern slavery, giving Haitain mothers safe places to give birth amid their shaken country, AND it doesn't include the women of great faith who are pillars in our own lives: moms, sisters, friends, coworkers, teachers, counselors,on and on and on.
Or as the author says:
"Right along side stories of David and Moses and Pail, of Luther and Calvin, of Bonhoeffer and our dads, we could tell the stories of our own patron saints, our church mamas, our Kingdom midwives, the women of the Bible and the women of the Word walking among us right now".
There is so much more in this book that I just don't have the space to go through it all, but you could do worse than a couple of hours with this book in one hand and your Bible open in front of you. And frankly, I hope none of this shocks you. Jesus loves everyone, so of course he loves women. Jesus' words of the Gospel work through everyone, so of course it works through women. Humans were lovingly created in God's own image, so of course it includes women.
But you know, reminders are good.
It boils down to essentially this: women make up half the church and half of the world. The untapped potential should be frightening. Make the opportunities for yourself to do big, glorious things if the opportunities are not made for you.
