Women Who Followed Jesus; Forty Devotions on the Journey to Easter
By the time you get to my age, you’ve had the benefit of years to experience many different types of devotionals. So many of them are written from the point of view of the author, working with Scripture and research to help you see why they support their ways of viewing the topic. These types of devotionals are good for helping the discerning reader determine author bias, personal bias, and how Scripture is read from perspective. It is rare to find a devotional that comes at topics through alternate lenses, so when Women Who Followed Jesus; Forty Devotions on the Journey to Easter arrived on my doorstep from the publisher, I was eager to see what the author had written. Spoiler alert: I have a new devotional worthy of the scant quiet devotion time I have each morning.
Women Who Followed Jesus is a series of forty devotionals that follow Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Susanna, Joanna, Salome, Mary of Bethany, Martha, and the Samaritan woman at the well. The author weaves research about daily life in their times with what Scripture tells us about their lives, peppered with questions to ponder. Each devotion opens with Scripture references that center around a daily theme and winds down with a prayer. Each devotion is a six page spread of well-spaced and well–written text, ample white space for readers to use for note taking, and places to write observations, prayers, and further wonderings. It should be noted that this devotional is not geared toward women; it tells stories of women and there is something for everyone in this.
You can use this devotional guide in several different ways in your ministry. You can give it to people to use throughout the season of Lent, and they can go at it as they prefer. However, there is so much meat inside the pages that you can easily flex this for other purposes. It could be a great choice for an adult faith formation class throughout Lent. The pondering questions at the end of each devotion would be excellent conversation topics. You can do so in person or online- this book is flexible. This book could also inspire a sermon series for any season, even if it is written for the forty days leading up to Easter. I would also love to see this used as the spine of a multigenerational faith formation class. The topics are accessible to high school aged youth, and offering materials for teens and their parents to use together is a wonderful ministry. Don’t let the title of this devotional let you overlook the various ways this book can be used!
