It’s so exciting that ‘Chosen’ is touring and welcoming bookings, and I am finding new topics to write on. I have a project that has been brewing for a bit, but trying to work out which group of women to focus on. It will be a modern piece but using the stories of women that either made up Jesus’ family line who are named or the women that interacted with him, who weren’t. Why weren’t their names written down? Was that to save their privacy, as none of the them had lives that would be shouted about? Except they were, lots of people know their stories.
I have just watched the documentary ‘Amy’ which won an Oscar last night. We can’t live in the ‘what if?’ mentality, but Amy Winehouse was so gifted and so hurting, what if must resonant so much for those that loved and lost her. Her character may have been similar to some of these unnamed women. Jesus brought new life to those women. Did their story get told and remembered because of their brokenness or because of their boldness to reach out and change?
Celebrity did not seem to be something that Amy Winehouse wanted, she seemed to want to sing. And she pursued this. I know nothing of Amy Winehouse’s faith. Her story came to me through the media, through her celebrity. Will she be remembered for her remarkable music or the decisions that she made. Here’s where the ‘What if?’ comes in. What if Jesus had met her, like one of those women from the New Testament, would the media have let her change in the way these women changed when Jesus met and healed them?
It’s too late to pray as Amy’s life has gone. But there are others that become celebrities since. I am challenged to pray for these women, and ask Jesus to meet them like He did to the bleeding, the adulterous and the woman at the Well. The celebrities may not like their labels that the media give them. But Jesus has new labels for them, forgiven, loved and free-and above all, daughters of the Most High God!