Emphasis Preaching Journal

Karen Hoover, a Methodist pastor in Seattle, tells of a woman who phoned to ask if she might just come and sit in the sanctuary in order to try to overcome the fears she feels in church. The woman came, sat in a pew, and tearfully related how she had been sexually abused in childhood, by her father, by an uncle, and even by her brother. Then, writes Hoover, "in a burst of rage she looked up at the stained-glass window which pictures Jesus saying, 'Come unto me,' and she shouted: 'Where were you when they were hurting me? You're a man.