During the summer between my junior and senior years of
college —I’ll let you guess how many years ago that was— friends gave me two
things to read: Hal Lindsey’s Late, Great Planet Earth and a tract of
a new Bible translation of John’s gospel, which was later named the New International Version (NIV).
Lindsey put the fear of God in me, and John’s gospel reminded me that
Jesus loves me. I put my trust in Jesus
Christ, and have been walking in the faith for many years now.
After several years in a local church, I was invited to
teach adult Christian ed classes, which I enjoyed very much. But teaching made me realize how very little
I knew about Scripture, especially its historical background and how to read an
ancient text. In 1987 I took a week off
from my job in computer science to attend the Congress on Biblical Exposition in
Anaheim, Ca, where I heard Dr. Roberta Hestenes give her testimony. She was the first woman I had heard of who
had a ministry in her own right. As I
result of that experience I pledged myself to faithful exposition of the Bible
in whatever setting was open to me.
A desire to go to seminary began to grow to my heart, but I
already had a good career and I didn't know of any other women who had been to
seminary. After two years of processing
and praying, I quit my job and enrolled in Westminster Theological Seminary
(WTS) in Philadelphia. There I found
only a few other female students at that time.
At WTS the faculty encouraged and affirmed my gifts, and
after finishing an MA in Biblical Studies, I continued on there to earn a PhD
in Biblical Hermeneutics. My first year
after graduation was spent in adjunct teaching, which I had been doing as I
worked on my dissertation. And then an opportunity
opened to take a one-year visiting professorship at Westmont College in Santa
Barbara, Ca teaching New Testament.
After nine years there I was offered the Gerald F. Hawthorne Chair of
New Testament Greek and Exegesis at Wheaton College and Graduate School, a
position I’ve currently held for almost a decade.
Through all life’s ups and downs in these past decades, I’ve
learned that we don’t need to see the end of the story from the beginning or
middle. We’re called to be faithful and
obedient to the Lord at each step, and he will guide us into our future.