She rests. Watches. Waits. Her brood continue their merry lives around her, oblivious to the weighty responsibility of feeding and caring for the pride that she bears. She holds still, conserving the energy she will need for the moment …
She rises, bolts. Runs like the wind, fiercly, boldly. Grabs her prey, wrestles it, doggedly, determined, again and again, as it falls or should it evade. As she has success or as she must return to her wait.
For as she rises, as she runs, as she pursues what she aims to take for the benefit of her people, her family, her loved one, she roars. Oh how she roars. Have you ever roared? Have you connected to that place within you, where there is nothing left to feel but that deep sense of ‘I HAVE to do this’. This MUST be. This is NOW.
Last night, after a particularly challenging time of prayer and lament, my tears turned almost imperceptively into cries, and then into deep, deep roars, from somewhere within me I’m not sure I’d found before. Wrapped up in a blanket, I had the soundproofing to just go with it, so I did. How liberating! How joyful in the midst of the pain! What a glorifying release, to be led to that place in prayer and then be gifted a way to let it go in such a profound and spiritual way.
When God called the world into being, was it with a gentle whisper, or an almighty roar? When Jesus turned the tables did he do so with a polite ‘Excuse me’ to please the Tone Police, or with an almighty roar? When the Spirit fell on the Apostles on that first Pentecost, was it with a gentle ‘Peekaboo’? Of course there is a place for a whispering movement of God, but no, it was with an almighty roar!
As Kamala Harris so deftly showed the world in the 2020 US Vice Presidential Debate, women are used to being silenced, and doing so with dignity. I say, the time for politeness is over. I say, let us practice and get used to hearing our voices in an almighty roar as the Lionesses of the Pride of Judah that we are!
Peace be with you
Deconstructing Church 