Women of the Bible Devotional for Quiet Growth
Some are given only a few verses.
And some appear so briefly that if we are reading too quickly, we can almost miss them.
But I have learned not to mistake a small amount of Scripture for a small story.
Again and again, the women of the Bible remind me that God sees people personally. He meets them in waiting, grief, complicated families, impossible decisions, ordinary work, quiet service, and moments when they may have wondered if anyone saw them at all.
That is one of the things I love most about spending time with the women of Scripture.
Their stories are not neat.
Neither are ours.
Let Her Story Be Her Story
When I read about a woman in Scripture, I try not to immediately ask, “What does this mean for me?”
There is something that comes before that.
Who was she?
What was happening around her?
What was she carrying when she walked into this moment?
And perhaps most importantly, what does her story show me about God?
Hagar is one of the women who taught me this.
Her story is painful. There is powerlessness in it. There is mistreatment. There is loneliness.
I don't want to hurry past any of that because I know what comes next.
I want to sit with her in the wilderness for a moment.
Because that is where God met her.
Hagar, a woman who had every reason to believe she was unseen, encountered the God who saw her.
She called Him El Roi.
The God who sees me.
There is something profoundly tender about that.
God did not need Hagar to make her story prettier before He entered it. He saw where she was. He knew what had happened. He knew what she carried into that wilderness.
And He met her there.
More Than the One Thing We Remember
Sometimes we know the stories so well that the women inside them become one thing.
Ruth was loyal.
Esther was brave.
Mary was obedient.
Martha was busy.
But they were women, not lessons.
Ruth knew grief. She left everything familiar and walked toward a future she could not see.
Esther had courage, yes, but courage does not mean she wasn't afraid.
Mary said yes to God without knowing all that yes would eventually ask of her.
And Martha, whom we so often remember for being busy, was also the woman who stood before Jesus in the middle of terrible grief and declared what she believed about Him.
Their stories become richer when we allow them to remain human.
And I think our understanding of God becomes richer too.
The point is not simply that we should be more courageous like Esther or more faithful like Ruth.
Look at the God who met them.
Look at the God who called them, sustained them, corrected them, heard them, protected them, and remained with them.
That is where I want my attention to stay.
You Don't Need a Perfect Devotional Routine
I love journals. This probably surprises no one.
I love questions and notes in margins and those moments when a verse I have read many times suddenly makes me stop.
But I don't believe we need to make spending time with Scripture complicated.
Some days there is time to sit quietly with a Bible and a journal.
Some days there isn't.
Sometimes you may read an entire chapter and fill a page with thoughts.
Sometimes one verse is enough to hold you for the day.
And sometimes the only prayer you have is:
“God, help me.”
That is still prayer.
When you read one of these women's stories, read it first without trying to turn it into something.
Notice where she is.
Notice what has happened.
Notice what she says.
Notice what she doesn't say.
And notice what God does.
Sometimes the thing we need to learn is not immediately about ourselves at all.
Sometimes we simply need to see Him.
Some Stories Need More Time
There are stories in Scripture that should not be hurried.
Hannah is one of them.
We know the ending, and knowing the ending can make it easy to rush past the woman who was weeping before she ever held Samuel.
Her anguish mattered.
Her prayer mattered.
And the woman pouring out her soul before the Lord deserves our attention just as much as the mother who eventually held the child she had prayed for.
Her story contains both sorrow and worship.
Other stories are harder.
Tamar.
Jephthah's daughter.
Women whose suffering is recorded without the tidy resolution we might wish Scripture had given us.
We do not have to make those stories comfortable.
We do not have to call something good simply because it appears in the Bible. Scripture records human cruelty, brokenness, injustice, terrible choices, and terrible consequences alongside God's faithfulness.
Sometimes the faithful response to a difficult passage is to admit:
This hurts.
I don't understand this.
I wish this had been different.
God is not threatened by those words.
And Then There Are the Women We Almost Miss
These may be some of my favorites.
The widow of Zarephath gave when she had almost nothing.
The Shunammite woman opened her home and later spoke boldly from the depths of grief.
The woman who had been bleeding for twelve years reached through a crowd just to touch Jesus' clothing.
The Syrophoenician woman refused to walk away.
Women supported Jesus and His ministry from what they had.
Women came carrying spices.
Women opened their homes.
Women protected children.
Women gave food.
Women gave money.
Women prayed.
Women stayed.
So many of these things would have looked very ordinary while they were happening.
That matters to me.
Because most of our lives are lived in ordinary moments too.
We may think that something has to be large or public before it matters in the kingdom of God.
Scripture keeps telling us otherwise.
A meal prepared.
A child protected.
A stranger welcomed.
A word spoken when it needed to be spoken.
A small offering given.
Someone willing to stay when leaving would have been easier.
God saw all of it.
Let Scripture Become Prayer
One of the reasons I return to these women is that their stories give me words for things I sometimes don't know how to say.
When I read Sarah, I can talk to God about waiting.
When I read Leah, I can talk to Him about wanting to be chosen.
When I read Hannah, I can bring Him the prayer I am tired of praying.
When I read Mary, I can ask what it means to trust God when I cannot possibly know everything that comes after yes.
When I read Martha, I can remember that faith and grief can exist in the same sentence.
Their stories do not promise me their outcomes.
That distinction matters.
Hannah received the child she prayed for. Esther saw her people delivered. Elizabeth held a baby after years of barrenness.
Those stories do not mean that every prayer will be answered in the same way.
God's faithfulness is not a formula.
Sometimes faithfulness looks like an answered prayer.
Sometimes it looks like God remaining with us through the answer we did not want.
This Is Why I Wrote Daughters of the Story
40 Days with the Daughters of the Story grew from my desire to spend time with these women as women.
Not characters.
Not object lessons.
Not names we hurry past on the way to someone we think is more important.
Women.
Women who loved and grieved. Women who waited. Women who made mistakes. Women who were brave and frightened and faithful and complicated.
Women who encountered God.
Some of them are famous.
Some of them don't even have names recorded for us.
Yet God saw them.
That may be the thread I keep returning to more than any other.
The God who saw Hagar in the wilderness saw Hannah weeping. He saw the widow putting two small coins into the treasury. He saw the woman reaching through the crowd. He saw Mary Magdalene standing outside an empty tomb, crying.
And He sees the things that happen quietly now.
The prayer nobody else hears.
The kindness nobody notices.
The meal prepared.
The child protected.
The difficult thing survived.
The small offering given in faith.
The decision to stay.
The courage to leave.
The willingness to begin again.
Maybe that is where a women of the Bible devotional really begins.
Not with trying to become one of these women.
But with sitting beside her story long enough to notice the God who saw her.
And remembering that He still sees us.
