10 Women Every Christian Should Know (Ebook Shorts) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Michelle DeRusha

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56 pages

English

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Inspiring stories of 10 Christian women who made a difference in the lives of people around them and had an immeasurable impact on the kingdom of God.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	16 septembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441245946
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0202€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2014 by Michelle DeRusha
Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2014
Taken from 50 Women Every Christian Should Know by Michelle DeRusha
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-4594-6
Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency.
Contents
Cover 1
Title Page 3
Copyright Page 4
1. Teresa of Ávila: Afire with a Great Love for God (1515–1582) 6
2. Anne Hutchinson: The Perseverance of a Puritan Preacher (1591–1643) 10
3. Harriet Beecher Stowe: She Wrote for Freedom, She Wrote for Hope (1811–1896) 14
4. Harriet Tubman: “I Was Free; They Should Be Free” (1820–1913) 18
5. Catherine Booth: Mother of the Army (1829–1890) 22
6. Fanny Crosby: My Story, My Song (1840–1915) 26
7. Amy Carmichael: The Winning of Souls (1867–1951) 30
8. Corrie ten Boom: Under His Wings You Shall Trust (1892–1983) 34
9. Edith Schaeffer: A Wonderful Paradox (1914–2013) 38
10. Ruth Bell Graham: Keep Looking Forward (1920–2007) 42
Notes 46
About the Author 51
Back Ads 53
Back Cover 57
1 Te resa of Ávila
Afire with a Great Love for God
(1515–1582)

T eresa de Cepeda y Ahumada had a penchant for fine clothes, and her expressive fashion complemented her vivacious personality. As a young woman she draped herself in decadent fabrics and jewels, from glittering earrings, enormous brooches, and opulent rings to rich silks and exquisite lace. With her hair elaborately coiffed in the latest style and her body scented in perfume, she often spent her evenings on the town, dancing and reveling with her friends and suitors. She was equal parts effusive and temperamental, depending on the day or the hour. She also loved laughter, frivolity, gossip, and entertainment; relished lively music; and enjoyed an appetite for good food as well as the good life—“There is a time for penance, and a time for partridge,” she once quipped. 1 More than anything, she craved attention and was often at the center of it.
As difficult as it is to reconcile this Teresa (bold, beautiful, materialistic, and vain) with the perception of Teresa of Ávila (mystic, Carmelite nun, theologian, and saint), the two are indeed one and the same. So the question is, how was this fashionista socialite transformed into a faithful saint?
Wrestling Demons
Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada was born in 1515 in Gotarrendura, Spain, the daughter of Alonso Sanchez de Cepeda and Alonso’s second wife, Beatriz. She was one of twelve children in the wealthy, prestigious de Cepeda family, and she lived in a sprawling compound complete with elaborate gardens, numerous servants, and a home filled with intricate Flemish tapestries and carpets, wrought-iron chandeliers, and stately oak furniture.
Although Teresa was inclined toward the frivolous, she had a deeper, more troubled side as well. As a young girl of seven, she pored over the pages of the Flos Sanctorum , a popular collection of stories about the saints and martyrs. Convinced it would be more expeditious to martyr herself and go straight to heaven immediately rather than live out her entire life, she convinced her older brother to run away with her to the Moors. Once there she planned to proclaim herself a Christian and, she hoped, be beheaded for it and ascend instantly to heaven. The two siblings snuck out of the house at dawn and made it just outside the city’s fortress walls before their uncle arrived on horseback and whisked them home.
After her mother died in childbirth, Teresa, by then a young teenager, put herself in the hands of the Virgin Mary, prostrating herself before Mary’s statue and begging her to fill the huge gap left in her life. It was a veneration that would last a lifetime, yet it didn’t wrench Teresa from the grip of frivolity just yet. In fact, if anything, her mother’s death led Teresa to the brink of temptation. Fearing his daughter’s honor was at stake, her father packed Teresa off to the nearby Augustinian convent, which ran a finishing school that prepared the wealthy young boarders for a devout domestic life. At Santa Maria de Gracia, Teresa wore the demeanor of a pious young woman, but on the inside, she still struggled to expel the demons that tormented her.
Two Choices
The truth was Teresa didn’t want to be a nun, and she worried she wasn’t suited for a life of such spiritual devotion. She watched the older nuns at Santa Maria de Gracia, noting their passionate prayers, their dedication, and their obvious love for God. But Teresa didn’t feel any of the emotion she observed in her role models. She never even wept while she prayed, and that lack of emotional connection with God disturbed her. “She was a hard-praying, dry-eyed realist,” writes biographer Cathleen Medwick, “with (it seemed) very little to offer God.” 2 She was concerned that if she entered the convent and continued to fail at prayer, her days would yawn open one after another, an endless spiritual wasteland.
Ironically, Teresa was rescued by illness, the first bout of many afflictions she would suffer throughout her life. Forced to leave Santa Maria de Gracia, she convalesced at her uncle’s home, where she engaged in long theological conversations with him. “I began to grasp that truth which I had heard as a child, that all is nothing, and that the world is vanity and on the verge of ending,” she wrote. “And I began to be afraid that if I had died right then, I would have gone to hell. Even though I couldn’t make myself want to become a nun, I saw that was the best and safest thing to do; and so, little by little, I decided to bully myself into doing it.” 3
As it turned out, Teresa of Ávila became a nun simply because she was terrified of damnation.
The Visions . . . and a Break from Worldliness
In 1535 Teresa entered the La Encarnacion convent in Ávila, where she remained for twenty-six years. It’s no coincidence that the order she chose was significantly less demanding than the Augustinian order. In fact, Renaissance scholar Theodore Rabb notes, “This may indicate how gradually she moved from worldliness to the austerity for which she would eventually be known.” 4 At La Encarnacion, Teresa lived in a two-level suite with fine furniture and its own kitchen. She was allowed to entertain friends and relatives, was encouraged to leave the convent when she needed to, and was referred to as “Dona Teresa,” a nod to her social standing.
Throughout her thirties Teresa continued to suffer from worsening episodes of illness, fainting, fevers, and visions, which she interpreted as a direct reprimand from God for her sins. And while she grew into her role as a nun with surprising ease, Teresa still battled the temptation of worldly distractions. “All the things of God gave me great pleasure, yet I was tied and bound to those of the world,” she wrote years later. 5 Although it most likely pained Teresa to include this account of her twenty-year battle with temptation in her Vida , her spiritual autobiography, she recorded her own personal struggles as a testament to God’s resilient pursuit and forgiveness of even the most persistent sinners.
As she approached her fortieth birthday, Teresa began to experience some relief from her spiritual strife, namely through a new way of praying, which prompted a feeling of communion with God. These visions would become known as her raptures, the most famous of which is portrayed in Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s The Ecstasy of St. Teresa in Rome. “In his hands I saw a long golden spear and at the end of the iron tip I seemed to see a point of fire,” Teresa wrote about the angel who visited her during the rapture. “With this he seemed to pierce my heart several times so that it reached my entrails. When he drew it out I thought he was drawing them out with it, and he left me completely afire with a great love of God.” 6
The problem, of course, was that some church officials suspected that Teresa’s raptures were the work of the devil, or worse, her attempt to commune directly with God. In these years following the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church was highly suspicious of even remotely unorthodox behavior—they didn’t quite know what to do with a nun whose visions gave her direct contact with God. In fact, Teresa, who by this point had renounced her secular name and embraced the name Teresa de Jesus, faced resistance from the church and the Inquisition until her death in 1582.
Convent Reform
Several years after she entered La Encarnacion, Teresa began to hear a new message and direction from God. She realized that while she had devoted herself to God, she had not relinquished her comfortable life. As a result, she began to contemplate the possibility of a stricter existence for her and her nuns, including a vow of poverty. God, it seemed, agreed. Teresa felt him encourage her to develop a new convent, and she believed he even presented her with its name: San Jose.
Life at San Jose was a dramatic departure from Teresa’s La Encarnacion suite and certainly from her pampered life as a child and young adult. Now, instead of luxurious fabrics and furs, she wore a threadbare habit of coarse wool and walked barefoot over the rocky terrain. Instead of rich food and drink, she abstained from red meat and ate only bread, cheese, fruit, and vegetables cultivated in the convent garden. Instead of gossip and socialization with the other nuns or visitors, there was either silence or prayer. In spite of the hardships, Teresa couldn’t have been happier. She describes her five years