Setting Your Course
In the excellent movie, Hidden Figures, the brilliant Katherine Johnson calculates trajectories for a space shuttle. Due to the accuracy of her calculations, the capsule returns to Earth safely. Obviously, any miscalculations could have been devastating and caused the death of the astronauts. I have heard it said that if a trajectory is off even slightly, a spacecraft will land a huge distance from the intended target and could have catastrophic consequences.
According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, the definition of the word trajectory is as follows: “The path followed by a projectile flying or an object moving under the action of given forces.”[1] There are many “given forces” in our world and culture that can shape our thinking and decision making, consequently sending our lives in certain directions. The Bible speaks often of the paths we take:
“So be very careful how you live, not being like those with no understanding, but live honorably with true wisdom, for we are living in evil times. Take full advantage of every day as you spend your life for his purposes.”
Ephesians 5:15–16 TPT
There are paths preset by culture and religious thinking that will take us to destinations far below God’s high intention for us. Many believers fail to “give careful thought” to where they are headed and simply go along with the norm of their society. On the other hand, I see powerful biblical examples of people who entirely altered their course, because the situation around them demanded a drastic response.
A biblical example of this is Esther—a beautiful woman who was, in today’s terms, trafficked into the Persian king’s harem. In the middle of a horrific situation, Esther radically changed her formerly compliant mindset into one of taking charge of the circumstances. She boldly defied the law of the land and strong cultural expectations for women and risked her life to save her people from genocide. Through her heroic action, she literally changed the world by preserving the lineage of the Messiah.
When we are first introduced to Saul (later named, “Paul”) in the book of Acts, his trajectory was empowered by a misdirected zeal to destroy anything that threatened his rigid religious system. After his encounter with Jesus, however, he spent fourteen years discovering the glory of Christ’s redemptive act and God’s brilliant purposes for the church. His new trajectory became all about pressing on “toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus,” (Phil. 3:14 NIV). Through his writing and ministry, he blew the lid off a small Jewish sect of Jesus followers and set the stage for the Christian faith to be spread worldwide.
The Bible, as well as history, is full of people who forsook their countries, cultures, or worldly honor and were gripped by God’s passion and changed their generation, often at great cost to themselves. They bravely changed their preset trajectory and were often ridiculed and persecuted for it.
Today, there is a massive attack on women and womanhood all over the world. Women are gang-raped as a weapon of war, brutally beaten and oppressed through domestic violence in South America, having their genitals mutilated in Africa and the Middle East, whipped for showing their ankles in Afghanistan, killed as babies in China, and sold into sex trafficking all over the world. Female oppression in the world has sunk to an unimaginable low.
I am grieved and perplexed by the ignorance and lack of outrage among Western Christian believers over such culturally-accepted atrocities. With our message of God’s redeeming love and His value for every human, I ask myself why there isn’t more of a collective outcry from the church. Thankfully, I also see movements where women and men work side by side, often in societies where this is culturally unacceptable. God is blessing, and revival fires are raging. Like Carolyn Justus James, I am wondering:
Who knows what could happen if we (women) took seriously God’s vision for us, and what a difference we could make if [Christian women] everywhere were waking up with big creative ideas for how God might use them for his kingdom and boldly taking the lead? May it never be said that we ignored the cries of the helpless and focused on ourselves. May we be remembered as a generation who caught God’s vision, faced our fears, and rose up to serve his cause.[2]
We in Women in Community are determined to play our part in leaving the world a better place than how we found it. And we need your help in so many ways. We are convinced that God is moving His people away from a passive, celebrity-leader focused model to the new wineskin of decentralized grassroot discipleship movements. As these movements continue to branch out across the globe, we want to awaken Christian women to arise and take their place. Now is the time to lift our eyes to the goal of His high calling and boldly and carefully set our trajectory.
[1] www.oxfordlearnersdictionary.com
[2] Carolyn Justus James, Half the Church: Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011) 193.