He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.  - (Luke 1:53) Advent is often framed as quiet anticipation - candles, carols, a gentle countdown to something holy. But scripture tells a different story. Advent is not passive. It is not polite. It is not silent. Advent is what happens when people prepare for transformation while still trapped inside systems that were never built for their survival. The women of scripture did not wait in comfort. Ma

Before Mary ever sang her song of defiance, a woman named Hagar cried out in the wilderness. Long before Elizabeth rejoiced over a long-awaited child, Hagar wept over one she feared would die.

Some prophets shouted from mountaintops. Anna prayed in the shadows.

Some stories are loud and fast  -  miracles in motion, angels and announcements.

If Tamar makes church folks squirm, Lot’s daughters practically blow the doors off the Sunday School classroom. Their story in Genesis 19 is short, shocking, and often whispered about: two sisters who got their father drunk and conceived children by him.

Say the name Jezebel, and most people immediately picture the ultimate bad girl of the Bible—the woman so scandalous she got her own eternal insult.

Tamar doesn’t usually make it into Sunday School flannelgraph sets. Her story in Genesis 38 is messy, scandalous, and uncomfortable for anyone who wants the Bible to be a neat moral guidebook. She was Judah’s daughter-in-law, widowed twice, promised security but denied it, and ultimately forced to take matters into her own hands.

If you’ve ever heard Rehab’s name in church, it almost always comes with a label:  “Rehab the prostitute.”  Out of all the things she did, all the roles she played, the one word attached to her forever is her occupation.

Say the name Bathsheba, and most people picture a beautiful woman bathing on a rooftop, luring poor King David into sin. She’s been cast for centuries as the biblical seductress - the woman who tempted a man after God’s own heart.

If you grew up in church, you probably remember the Samaritan woman from John 4—the one who meets Jesus at a well, has “five husbands,” and is living with a man who isn’t her husband. Cue the Sunday School whisper: immoral… loose… fallen.