Christina Fox, Author at Women.pcacdm.org

An Ancestry of Faith

KATHLEEN CHAPELL|GUEST Several years ago, I took my elderly mother on a road trip to a family reunion. I learned a lot during those four days of travel with her—about my mother, and about myself—but also about my heritage—my heritage through generations of believing mothers. My mother, Audrey Roos Gabriel, was raised as a preacher's kid and trained to be a nurse. Along with Dad, she raised four kids, helped us with homework, drove us to innumerable music lessons, and taught us to love hymns and Jesus. Her mother, my grandmother, Alice Hamilton Roos, was raised by a widowed mother and was a pastor's wife for 30 years. Widowed at 58, Grandma taught me about the faithfulness of our Heavenly Father. “I was never afraid,” she would say. “The Lord has always been faithful to me.” Her mother, Melissa Gannaway Hamilton, was raised by a widowed father, married at 16, had ten children, taught Sunday School in the mountains of rural Tennessee, could recite whole chapters of Scripture and many whole Psalms by heart, and taught her children to love Jesus and depend on Him in hard times. Her mother, Tirzah Ferguson Gannaway, who, when her young husband was conscripted into the Confederate Army during the Civil War, gathered up their three young children and newborn daughter, packed a few belongings and the family Bible, and walked through the forests and foothills of central Tennessee to her parents' farm, seeking their protection. Tirzah didn't live to see her children grow to adulthood, but all the family knows the story of how her husband fell in love with her because of her faith in God and her passionate love of the Scripture. And there was HER mother: Eliza Craig Ferguson. Sadly, I know nothing more than her name and dates. No old photos, no family stories. But I think it's clear she raised her daughter, Tirzah, to love the Lord, and I can surmise that she, too, loved Jesus as her Savior.” He is My Inheritance And so there you are—at least five generations of mothers teaching their children about God’s love, praying with and for them, and praying for the generations to come. And I am the next in line. Bryan and I taught our kids about the grace of our Savior while they were growing up—prayed with them and for them—even as now they each pray for their children...

An Ancestry of FaithChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:37:39+00:00

The Half-full Cup of Coffee: A New Perspective on our Interruptions

CATHERINE LARSON|GUEST “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14). The half-drunk cup of coffee is a running joke in our family. At the end of many a day, my husband will find my half-empty cup of coffee sitting cold on the counter. With six children underfoot, the morning ritual was of course interrupted by the baby’s cry, by the toddler needing help at the potty, by the fight which needed breaking up, and so on. There’s a glorious inefficiency to motherhood. It doesn’t seem to matter the task, there are always ample interruptions. There are points in my day where I do nothing but hold. The baby needs holding because he is fussing, the toddler wakes up from his nap grumpy, the seven-year-old skinned his knee. By the time the day is done, the tasks are still half-done, like my half-drunk cup of coffee. Maybe you are no longer in this stage of motherhood, but how often we all find this tantalizing satisfaction “of finishing” that eludes us. When it comes to motherhood, perhaps it is because the work of raising children is so abstract, that we long to complete anything. But in our lust for completion, the actual people in our lives—the relationships—can be seen as impediments to progress...

The Half-full Cup of Coffee: A New Perspective on our InterruptionsChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:38:00+00:00

Jesus Became Like Us

ALICE KIM|CONTRIBUTOR Have you noticed how you are drawn to certain characters and stories in the Bible? The reason we resonate with one more than another is they often mirror our natural bents and proclivities. The nuances and themes of their story give us words to name our own. We experience comfort and reassurance in our shared struggles and vulnerability to temptations. We are not alone; there is another who understands. In the letter to the Hebrews, the author addresses weary first century believers in danger of discouragement and disbelief. He helps them to see Jesus, the one who is intimate with humanity and their experiences of living in a broken, suffering, and fallen world. Though Jesus is divine, his humanness prepares him to be the great high priest who sympathizes and gives followers courage to persevere in their trials and suffering. Jesus, the Son of God It was essential to God’s redemptive plan that Jesus would have solidarity with those he would rescue and redeem. Therefore, Jesus “had to be” made like us “in every respect” (2:17). He was born in the ordinary way that infants come into the world. He crawled before he walked and cooed before he spoke intelligible sentences. He had his share of cuts and bruises, colds and flus. And he matured in understanding and wisdom: he “learned obedience” (5:8) and was “made perfect” (5:9). In essence, he took on flesh and became like us...

Jesus Became Like UsChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:38:25+00:00

The Passion of Our Savior

SUE HARRIS|CONTRIBUTOR I hate the sight of blood. I have a weak stomach and often must turn away from the gruesome. News flash: don’t ever call me to administer first aid. I simply can’t handle it. Jesus’ crucifixion is no exception. I remember watching the Passion of the Christ in the theater twenty years ago. This movie follows the last week of Jesus’ life, the Via Dolorosa (the sorrowful way or journey). Passion week. The road to the cross. It was bloody. It was difficult and, if I’m honest, it was exhausting. I had to look away in a few scenes. Jesus was beaten, bloodied, mocked, unclothed, and spit upon. I had been a Christian a number of years and knew the story: Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I even knew many of the details like the crown of thorns, the scourging, and the striking of his face, but I had never actually seen a dramatization like the film depicted. I often work in my yard and when I’m working around thorns, I wear heavy-duty gloves and long sleeves to prevent thorns from tearing up my hands and arms. Thorns don’t just scratch your skin; they imbed themselves into your flesh, going deeper and deeper. And they inflict more pain when you try to pull them out. It’s dreadful imagining thorns in the shape of a crown being forced onto the head of my Savior. Watching the scourging on screen was stomach-turning. Jesus was more than simply whipped, as if that wasn’t enough. In a scourging, the whip has sharp tips attached to the end that are made to dig into human skin. The flesh on Jesus’ back was literally ripped apart. And if that wasn’t enough, men struck him in the face. I have never been punched in the face, but my perfect Redeemer was. Time after time after time. Watching this on the big screen gave me a dramatic view into what happened that day. I can only assume that it was, truthfully, worse. I cried, of course, and I wondered, “Why did Jesus have to die this kind of death?”...

The Passion of Our SaviorChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:38:52+00:00

Your Will Be Done

BARBARANNE KELLY|CONTRIBUTOR “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven . . . “ We pray this every Sunday morning, standing among the assembled saints. Heads bowed, holding hands, we pray for the Lord’s will. Some may pray it by rote, invoking the Name and the petitions in the same manner as every week, mind wandering. There may be some for whom the words are new, and they follow along in the bulletin. For many, there may be something particular in mind as they plead for God’s holy will to be done in their lives, praying with urgency, heavy hearts, even fear. Have any saints prayed these words with the urgency felt by our Lord on the night before his crucifixion? “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39). Our Lord knew what was coming. He’d been born for this purpose: to save his people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). From the beginning of his ministry, he marched toward the cross with undaunted resolve. When Satan offered him all the kingdoms of the world without the cross, Jesus rebuked him in the strongest terms (Matt. 4:10). And when Peter tried to dissuade him from his mission, Jesus rounded on him with the same strong rebuke: “Get behind me, Satan! . . . you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matt. 16:23)...

Your Will Be DoneChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:39:27+00:00

Loving the Unlovely

KIMBERLI SPOLAR|GUEST I was seven-years-old when my parents dismissed my dream to compete in the Little Miss New Jersey pageant. Thirty-seven years later, I brought the idea of competing for Mrs. North Carolina to my husband who was not sure it was a good idea. Five years of research, prayer, and two meetings with my pastor, and my husband finally agreed as he considered my pastor’s probing question, “What would it look like to join your wife in this adventure?” And after months of hard work, I was crowned Mrs. North Carolina USC 2022 at the age of 49. When I started my journey, all I really knew about pageantry was that I had an excuse to wear sequin gowns and that I needed to do my best in the competition. But what I learned was that God had a unique process of heart transformation planned for me. Pageant titleholders have the unique opportunity to publicly bring awareness to causes in which they are passionate about. I decided to partner with organizations working in Charlotte communities full of forgotten, undesirable, or otherwise marginalized people—many of them who were homeless. Scripture teaches that God is a helper to the needy. Psalm 72: 12, says, “For he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper.” And Psalm 70:5 says, “But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay!” As I daily came face-to-face with the homeless, talking with them, learning their names and then seeking them out by name, praying for them and caring for daily needs like food and clothing, God changed my heart and showed me what the compassion He has looks like as I sought to care for needy people living in the margins of Charlotte—the largest city in North Carolina and an affluent one. God changed my heart to see the homeless with a vertical lens applied to the horizontal...

Loving the UnlovelyChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:40:11+00:00

The One Thing You Have to Get Right

HEATHER MOLENDYK|CONTRIBUTOR You can get a lot of things wrong in life. You can go to the wrong school. You can give the wrong gift. You can wear the wrong outfit to a business presentation. You can buy the wrong house. You can marry the wrong man. But there is one thing you absolutely cannot get wrong in life: who Jesus is and what his time on earth was all about. Who is Jesus? If you want to know who Jesus is, ask Him. He isn’t shy. “I and the Father are one,” Jesus declares in John 10:30. Jesus is God. Let that thought linger for a moment. Sit with it awhile. Jesus is God. Meditate on it. Ponder all the implications that statement carries with it. Jesus is God. Evaluate your reaction to his identity claim. Wrestle with any discomfort you may feel as the form Jesus has taken in your imagination morphs into the identity Jesus claims about Himself. Jesus is God. What was Jesus’ ministry all about? Jesus did many great things during His three-year ministry. He miraculously fed thousands of people, but those same people were hungry the next day. He healed numerous physical ailments and raised some people from the dead; however, those same people eventually died at the end of their time. If Jesus’ miracles didn’t “stick,” then what was the purpose of them? Why feed people tonight who will only need to eat again tomorrow morning? Why raise someone from the dead now when they will only die again at some future date? Again, let’s ask Jesus the “why” behind the miracles. He is transparent about them. “The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me,” Jesus explains in John 10:25. The miracles are proof that Jesus is God. Jesus is God who took on the flesh of mankind to do what exactly? If the miracles aren’t the mission, if the easing of suffering is not the mission, then why, Jesus, are you here? “I am here to suffer, to be humiliated, and die,” Jesus proclaims to His followers. “I won’t stay dead. I will rise from the dead on the third day” (Matt. 16:21, Mk. 8:31, Lk. 9:22, paraphrased). Jesus is God. Jesus entered the world as a man so that He could die. Having divine power allows Jesus to fight death and rise again...

The One Thing You Have to Get RightChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:40:41+00:00

The Lament of Jesus

LISA WALLOVER|GUEST Christians are Resurrection People. We truly are. Every Easter morn, pastors around the world declare, “He is risen!” And all God’s people say, “He is risen, indeed!” Truly, every Sunday is that celebration! We serve a risen Savior. The tomb is empty. Life is full. Death, where is your sting? Except. Except that life still stings, sometimes. Maybe more than sometimes. Our hearts can be heavy. We are weary from the lingering weight of sin—around us, and within. To lament is to express to God that sadness that sits in our souls. I wonder if we are sometimes hesitant to lament because it somehow seems “unfaithful” to admit that sorrow can feel bigger than we are. Perhaps it even feels bigger than God. Is it possible that it is in this sorrow where we might meet God most closely? That He is there, waiting, because He deeply understands? That in our grief over sin and its effect, we may actually reflect God’s design and God’s heart? That in the midst of our sorrow we are “conformed to the image of His Son”? Isaiah wrote a description of the coming Messiah that sounds more like defeat than deliverance: He was to be “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Is. 53:3). And yet, this is the way of the gospel. The path toward the joy and victory of the empty tomb goes through the grief of Gethsemane and pain of Golgotha. It travels through our own grief and pain as well. Our God understands sadness. The sorrow that Jesus felt, He felt perfectly. Completely. How grateful we can be that the Gospel writers share His lament. Jesus wept at the tomb of His friend, Lazarus...

The Lament of JesusChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:41:29+00:00

When Downslide is a Downside for People with Down Syndrome

STEPHANIE HUBACH|CONTRIBUTOR STEPHANIE HUBACH|CONTRIBUTOR Upon picking my son Tim up from work one night, enclosed with his paycheck was a paper reminding employees of the company dress code at the grocery store where he works. (In his role there, we affectionately refer to him as “Cart Man.”) As I perused it, Tim asked me what it said. Reading it out loud, I quoted, “Hair of male employees shall be neatly trimmed and groomed.” To which Tim blurted out, in his jovial way, “What am I? A PET??” This type of wry humor has been characteristic of Tim for most of his teen and adult life. But not all of it. Have you ever seen the film Where Hope Grows, or do you watch Born This Way, or do you remember the TV series Life Goes On? If so, you likely have a positive picture of people with Down syndrome and their quality of life in the world. I am really thankful for that. I am deeply grateful for advocates in the generations before and during my son’s lifetime who have invested to create a more open society, a better public education system, and improved living conditions for people with Down syndrome (DS). A lot of social progress has been made for people with DS in the last several decades. If you are blessed enough to know someone with DS personally, you likely also have been embraced by a person who is frequently open-hearted to others, forgives easily, laughs heartily, worships joyfully, and dances freely. The ways in which many people with Down syndrome excel in life as image-bearers of the Living God can take my breath away at times. Many of them reflect God’s character into the world in stunning ways. My 31-year-old son Tim, who has Down syndrome, can be like that. But if we only characterize people by the successes we have made as a society on their behalf, or the ways in which their functioning is admirable, we miss the fuller picture of who they—and we—are as human beings. The Functional and Social Dimensions of Disability Disability can be characterized as having both a functional aspect and a social aspect. The functional aspect is the part of the body that doesn’t work the way we expect it to. In DS, this involves possessing an extra copy of the twenty-first chromosome. (Hence the medical name for Down syndrome: Trisomy 21.) This extra bit of chromosomal material creates a vast array of complications in learning, in communication, in the immune system, in heart health, and in digestive health—to name a few. The functional aspects of disability cry out for merciful engagement from others. I like to rely on the definition of mercy that was posited by St. Gregory of Nyssa—that “mercy is a voluntary sorrow which enjoins itself with the suffering of another.” While most people with DS would not describe their lives as being characterized by suffering, in my personal experience, most people I know with Down syndrome would acknowledge that their extra chromosome does present genuine challenges in their daily functioning in the world...

When Downslide is a Downside for People with Down SyndromeChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:42:03+00:00

The Lord Who Heals

RACHEL CRADDOCK|CONTRIBUTOR A few weeks ago, both my family of six and my fifth-grade homeroom were hit with a stomach bug. As I washed sheets, held buckets, and disinfected desktops, I couldn’t help but beg the Lord for healing from this common, modern-day plague. In my prayers, I called on Yahweh Rapha, the Hebrew name for God which means, The Lord Who Heals You. In The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer writes, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” I find the statement to be heart-wrenchingly true. When our knowledge of who God is limited, our faith is limited, and our prayers become limited. Discovering the multi-faced character of God through the study of His names has invited me to know Him more deeply, come to Him more boldly, and wait for His answers to my prayers more expectantly. As I prayed for my family and my students during our mini-plague, I could pray with confidence and surety because I know God is The Lord Who Heals...

The Lord Who HealsChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:42:33+00:00

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