If it were possible for a Jewish woman from 30AD and a modern-day Christian woman from 2025 to connect (via letters) about how Jesus changed their lives, what would they say to each other?

The two letters (between Sally and Barb) are published in a two-part reflection written in modern-day English vernacular.

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Pentecost, 30AD – Letter from Sally to Barb

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Dear Barb

I have had the incredible privilege of engaging with the Messiah of all mankind while He walked the earth. Almighty God in human form, He is the Son of God Who came to repair, restore, reinstate, recover and revolutionise. The purpose of His controversial ministry was simple, He came to serve ALL people while establishing His Father’s Kingdom on earth. The purpose of His life (as 100% God AND 100% man) was to surrender it as ultimate atonement to redeem mankind back to God. He hung out with the most abandoned pariahs of society and His compassionate affinity for attracting them was directly proportional to society’s disgust-infused drive to reject them. I used to be one of those pariahs. I used to check more than one of society’s VILE OFFENCES checkboxes, including by far the worst of all, being female.

I had been rejected by people, but NOT by the Messiah. Jesus Christ changed and redefined my life and I am profoundly honoured to be a part of this history-defining legacy for all future generations. He opened my eyes to the disturbed level of depraved indifference to which mankind has stooped, since its fall from God’s grace, to revoke the God-ordained dignity of the ultra-vulnerable. Almighty God, powerful Creator and Ruler of the entire compound universe, created man and woman to be distinctly different, but unequivocally equal.

Jesus’ ministry revealed just how messed up things had become in our fallen world. His redemptive gift to His followers secures to each of them a completely restored life on the perfect side of eternity. However, He did not change the nature of things on this broken side of eternity, and I suspect that it may even get messier in the future. As a restored first-rate, female follower of Jesus, I am writing to you living in the future to encourage you with my eyewitness testimony of this timeless truth.

Although Jewish by birth, I have always been on the repulsive end of the unconventional scale. Cruel violations of an unspeakably intimate nature during my formative years turned me into an adult woman who was NEVER going to be the doormat-baby-making-home-affairs-slave property of any man! However, just short of selling my soul to the devil, I have had to tear it apart and sell off parts of it to greedy bargain hunters just to survive. During this process I discovered that I was cunningly good at outwitting even the smartest oppressors, so through a long process of subtly beating them at their own public game in private, I have managed to gain education, riches and power. However, as my hatred and contempt for men increased, so also did the hidden, unbearable stench from the painful, open wounds in my soul.

That was until I met Him. Let’s just say that I was NOT looking to meet another man, even when rumour had it that He was the Son of God, because to put it politely, I was pretty angry with God at the time. I wasn’t looking for Him, yet He found me. It happened on a warm Spring evening. I was mildly intoxicated and fully immersed into an explosive altercation with a self righteous religious leader when He intervened. After He absorbed the full force of my rage-charged right fist in the palm of His swift-moving right hand, we made eye contact and my life changed forever. YOU WERE NOT CREATED TO BE WHAT YOU’VE HAD TO BECOME! I was stunned into dumbfounded silence. He was able to see right into the deepest depths of my soul and I instantly knew that NOTHING about my entire being, was hidden from Him.

First He saved me from the humiliation of male-governed, rigged prosecutorial damnation, and ultimately, He saved my life from eternal damnation. Jesus of Nazareth KNEW me even before I, unintentionally, almost slugged Him. He was unlike any man I have ever met. The compassion in His eyes, the gentle tone of His calm voice and the lovingkindness in His touch, instantly neutralised my hopped-up rage-infused temper. That night I left with Him to join His group of followers. He included and embraced the complete-package-me and I found belonging in a brand new family. But, truth be told, recalling my story now, renders a crazy collection of unbelievable wonder. I had willingly embarked on a journey with someone belonging to the subspecies of human beings which I hated more than anything else, a man. But He didn’t plan on violating my dignity and I didn’t plot to slit His throat.

The longer I spent with Jesus and His followers, my new family, the more I realised that I was changing without external force, coaxing or guilt-shaming. He treated all of us with the same undistracted devotion as if each one of us was the only person on the planet, His favourite. Yet, at the same time, He unlocked the different unique gifts and talents which His Father had created and placed within each one of us. We forged precious and faithful friendships with one another, closer than any earthly sibling relationship. He delighted in my math skills and implemented it in His ministry. With eager enthusiasm, He initiated stories and reflections for me to write and then He would read it aloud with fervent passion while beaming with pride. He did not expect me to cook and/or sew and He made no secret of His enjoyment of the randomness of my diverse mind. I was overwhelmed by feelings I had never known before, I felt loved, safe, cherished, heard, respected, revered, appreciated and needed. It was beyond beautiful and it gave the relentlessly fierce fighter within me a well-deserved restoration break.

Jesus knew that I would need the fierce fighter for a very specific part (the difficult, not-so-beautiful part) of my journey with Him, and it made a come-back at the same time I started observing my own pain in His eyes. It reflected the same gentle compassion, but with added urgency. Urgency for me to receive healing from my unbearable pain. He also knew that it would become much worse before it can become better, but He was always one step ahead, guiding and supporting me. He was never caught off guard by the severity of my pain and He was never repulsed by the abhorrent detail thereof. He never bailed and it felt as if His love and care for me, increased instead of the decrease I expected.

The crushing climax of this difficult part also became the beautiful breakthrough. It happened on a quiet cool evening. I distinctly remember asking Him about the diabolical degree of the abominable and perverse gang-rape as recorded in Judges 19. I had learned about it years before, through eavesdropping, and as it did then, it made my blood run cold while tripping up all of the imminent-calamity alarms. I became a runaway bullet train on a dangerous track and before I could gather myself, I lost it and got completely bent out of shape. It was only once I had regained a fairly sane level of composure, that I turned around and was met with a sight which I can neither explain nor forget. For a moment, He looked like a mortified father reliving the horrific details of the likely torture inflicted on his beloved daughter to have resulted in the unspeakable injuries to her mutilated corpse lying on a cold, clinical steel slab in the morgue. His eyes, still oozing out compassion, were drowning in a flood of tears which streamed down His cheeks. He KNOWS that poor woman too! She is His daughter…. Unlike me, He retained His composure throughout all of the devastation. Just as before, He spoke in the same gentle tone of His calm voice, only this time it was breaking up a little. IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE LIKE THIS! There was even more lovingkindness when He wrapped His arms around me in the most tender embrace. IT SHATTERS MY HEART, I AM SO SORRY FOR YOUR PAIN! He was clearly gutted and distraught. I HAVE COME TO MAKE A WAY FOR EVEN THE MOST IRREPARABLY BROKEN VICTIMS TO LIVE COMPLETELY HEALED ON THE OTHER SIDE OF ETERNITY. UNTIL THEN, MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR THEM… AND FOR YOU, DEAREST SALLY.

His SORRY was not a repentant confession of wrongdoing, He is perfect and His conduct is always flawless. Rather, it was the highest from of compassionate empathy, the holiest form of splagchnizomai (a Greek word which refers to a visceral feeling of having one’s gut twisted into a tight knot). At the time, I understood that He did not cause even a single incident of pain infliction, and later I would learn that when He took ALL of the pain and ALL of the pain-inflicting misconduct of ALL mankind onto Him, it broke ALL of Him. We never spoke of anything related to that soul-crushing topic again. We never needed to do so again. I still cannot explain it and I serious doubt that I would ever be able to, but, in an instant, His grace became enough for me. The stench in my soul dissipated and I delighted in the fresh newness of the healed wounds. I also felt sufficiently equipped to nurse the unhealed wounds and broken pieces without being dysfunctional. I am guaranteed of Jesus’ love, but not of the healing of all of my earthly brokenness. I shifted my focus from taking delight in the fresh newness of healing to taking delight in fresh daily mercies forthcoming from Him Whose unfailing and steadfast love sustains me in sufficient grace. My hope is in Him and not in healing. He called me to follow Him, and when I left behind my old life to do so, He also gifted me with the ability to, like Him, minister to other broken people, like me.

The love with which Jesus loves transcends language, culture, gender, heritage, financial & social status, education, and all the profanity of human nature. It has flooded my heart and soul and it consumes my mind. He truly IS the Son of God! A few weeks ago, I watched Him die and it sucked all the air out of my lungs while it shredded my insides. Three days later, I watched Him rise from the dead and it restored my insides to delightful perfection. A few days ago, I watched Him ascend to heaven and I grieved in hopeful sorrow. Although I still grieve the giant loss of His physical presence, I now journey with Holy Spirit until the end of time. He resides in me and He brings overwhelming comfort to my anxiety-prone mind.

It is my sincerest prayer that our Lord will use these words to minister to you.

Shalom to you
Sally