WOMEN THAT BREAK THE RULE RULES AND MAKE THEMSELVES VISIBLE.

THOUGHT AND ACTION PROVOKING. INTIMATE, FURIOUS AND LOVING, DEBBIE BLUE GIVES VOICE TO THE WOMEN OF THE BIBLE AS TOGETHER THEY TURN THE TABLE OF PATRIARCHY.

"The sayings of the wise are like goads," warned a preacher of old: words that are not as restful as one might expect. The wise speak and are goaded into action. Or perhaps the community works and the wise merely capture its hidden wisdom –words and deeds that can be more disruptive at times than polite. Debbie Blue attempts to tap into this spirit as she develops her preaching ministry as a founding pastor of House of Mercy, in St Paul, Minnesota.

Debbie took a step further along the line of the preacher of old. She collected her sermons, and as a result you have this book in your hand. Its contents are piercing as nails sometimes:

Goads that are unsettling more than complacent when it comes to questioning patriarchy. This is a collection of fifteen sermons that revolve around women. "The women in the Bible break a lot of rules, resist empire, disobey the cultural norms, cause good trouble (and sometimes not such good trouble). They are fully human. They help us glimpse the possibility of transformation (not always, but often). I think we are at a time and place in the life of the world where we need to hear their stories."

THERE IS A STORY BEHIND THE REIGNING, PATRIARCHAL CHRISTIAN NARRATIVE. IT IS THE STORY OF WOMEN, THEIR GOD, THEIR RESISTANCE

True to her style, pastor, preacher and author Debbie Blue, in Magnificat: A God Who Never Stopped Considering Women, spurs us on to that "possibility of transformation". She and the women in the stories with their resourcefulness, dancing, joie de vivre, irreverence, solidarity, pain, laughter and anger, constantly reminds us that  God loves us and means to set us free.