I'm feeling slightly better this morning, after seven whole hours of sleep... and I mean slightly. It isn't always easy to spend a day listening to the great problems of humanity, particularly when you're doing it while adjusting to an 11 hour time change. But today is a new day (despite the fact that Blogger says I'm posting on Wednesday night), and hopefully my mood will improve.

We are in an interesting position here, being American church workers at an international, secular feminist conference-- we've got two strikes against us, being Americans and being the representatives of organized religion. Frankly, I have to wonder what Christians and other religions around the world are doing to make women, women who are essentially following Jesus' command to care for "the least of these" in their work for sustainable development, human rights, and women's empowerment, dislike people of faith. Maybe it has to do with things like the Methodist Church in Fiji publicly calling for all LGBT people to be dragged out into the street and stoned. Or perhaps it is all the ho-hum stuff that we know about in the United States, with faiths that tell women quite explicitly where their place is in the church and society.

But is this honestly living out God's love for all people? What is it doing to our witness to the world? One woman from Malaysia, when we mentioned at lunch that the Presbyterian Church (USA) was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ordination of women next year, replied with incredulity, "You've had women pastors for 50 years??"

This is why I'm convinced, more than ever, that the work of NNPCW and other groups that express faith in a way that empowers women is crucial to not only the status of women in society, but also to our command by Christ to witness to the world God's love. It makes us different-- different from those who would say that God condones the injustices of the world as some sort of punishment for sin (whether committed directly by us or not), different from those who easily lose hope that their work for change will truly make a difference.

Because that's the other part of what makes us Christian feminists different. Yesterday I saw a lot of women who had been worn down by the fight. I get worn down, too, to tell you the truth. But I can fall back on the fact that "we are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed" (2 Corinthians 7:8-9). I can cling to the knowledge that God loves me, a woman; God doesn't want for the world what the world makes of itself; and God will someday make all things new. And I can be renewed in that knowledge far beyond any victory or defeat in the present struggle.

So, women of NNPCW, one by one we make a difference in the way women see the church, and the way the church sees women. May God be with us in our witness and our work.

"Sisters and brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of humanity, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him." --1 Thessalonians 4:13-14

Kelsey