Surrounded by a Cloud of Witnesses

Looking back at my old blogs, I was delighted to see that I have been posting monthly blogs since January 2021. That is a total of five years’ worth of blogs, comprising 66 in all. The more eagle-eyed of you might notice that this is more than one per month; that is because I have, on occasion, done a few weekly ones.

I want to start this post, as I finished the last one on Hildegard of Bingen, with a quote from Beth Allison Barr.

“What if our Sunday school and Bible study curriculum correctly reflected Junia as an apostle, Priscilla as a coworker, and women like Hildegard of Bingen as preachers? What if we recognized women’s leadership the same way as Paul did throughout his letters – even entrusting the Letter to the Romans to the deacon Phoebe? What if we listened to women in our evangelical churches the way Jesus listened to women? Women stand with a great cloud of witnesses. We always have. It is time, far past time, for us to remember.” (1)

This quote led me to think about the cloud of witnesses that Beth Allison Barr mentions.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run the race marked out for us.” Hebrews 12:1 NIVUK

The word “therefore” must take us to what came before, and in the previous chapter, the author of the letter tells us of the men and women of faith we read about in the Hebrew Scriptures. Each one is introduced with the words, “By faith…” The start of chapter 11 tells us what faith is: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1 NIVUK) Here we are told of those who suffered war, ill treatment, lions and fire.

Chapter 11 ends with a strange verse, saying, “God planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.” There is a connection between their experience and ours, those of us living out our faith today. Our experience is important to them as much as theirs is to us, and our understanding of how to run this race which is in front of us.

We are told that we are surrounded by these witnesses, and I have often been told that they are cheering us on from the grandstands and sidelines, but it is more than that. In Greek, the word translated as surround in English is perikaimennon, and it can also be used to mean “bound”. We are bound to those who share the faith, in the past and on into the future, to those who come after us. (2)

I have also heard it said that, as in a court of law, we can bring these witnesses forward who can testify to the truth. We can look at what they endured and be encouraged in our current suffering.

During the last five years, I have written posts about eighteen women from the New Testament, with many having more than one post. Aemelia Metella, my fictitious Roman journalist, interviews some of these women, who tell her their story. I wrote these in a creative way, building a backstory and creatively weaving a story around the Biblical account.

At the end of last year, I did a six-part series on Celebrating Women Pioneers of the Early Church. In which I told the stories of 24 women evangelists, leaders, apostles, theologians and writers, of the first five centuries of the church. And I have just finished my three-part series on the medieval nun and abbess, Hildegard of Bingen. If you have not read them, why not catch up on a few of my older posts?

Since I shared these posts on Pinterest, many more people have visited them, and to date, my three most popular blogs are:

1. Who Were the Women who Anointed Jesus?
2. Mary and Martha in Art
3. Mary Magdalene- Fallen Woman or Redeemed Saint?

Only through reading and hearing about these fantastic women can we understand how their lives reflect our own. To echo Beth Allison Barr, (3) I aim to change the future for women in the church by accurately understanding women’s lives in the past. This is what I have tried to do during the past four years, and here’s to my future blogs. Let me know if there is a woman in church history or in the Bible you would like me to write about.

Photo by Tuan Manh on unsplash

“Women stand with a great cloud of witnesses. We always have. It is time, far past time, for us to remember.” Beth Allison Barr

We are bound to those who share the faith, in the past and on into the future, and those who come after us.

I aim to change the future for women in the church by accurately understanding women’s lives in the past.