The room went quiet. You could feel the hesitation.
ASM Bible Engagement Director Tara Rye stood in a small room in Nebraska, surrounded by immigrant women from a different religious background. She had just shared a simple Bible story, then paused and asked what they thought.
No one spoke. Confusion hovered. The kind of silence born of a lifetime in a culture that tells women they aren’t supposed to ask questions.
Then, slowly, one woman leaned forward.
“Is the prophet you mentioned…Jesus?”
Their religious background points to Jesus as a prophet but this was the first they had heard more of His story.
Before He was named, they recognized the man in the story: the One who welcomes our questions.
Because these women come from an orality-based culture, we pray they learn, repeat, and carry the stories Tara shares with them wherever they go. When each woman in that room retells the story, it opens new ways of overcoming cultural barriers so that others can recognize and meet Jesus, too.
Each Bible story retold becomes another way for
God’s Word to reach people we may never meet.
ASM’s storytelling events with this community are ongoing and we are seeking to make this a course for others to use. Participants are learning new Bible stories, creating artwork of each scene, asking additional questions, and spending time with God’s Word. As they do, more women are discovering the God Who wants us to seek and knock, and Who welcomes our questions about Himself.
Thanks to your support, Tara is continuing to fan into a flame, the small but hungry embers of interest. We know God’s Word will not return empty. What He begins, He will complete.
