Magnificat follows the lead of the women, where there are no easy heroes or happily ever after’s, but where one can glimpse profound hope in each testimony given. Debbie Blue honors the women of Scripture and honors the community of faith with this gift of sermons for our journey onward in the ways of Jesus.

If you suspect that the Bible wasn’t written to warm our hearts (at least not female hearts) you’re ready for Debbie Blue. Elevating texts that feature women, she peels away misogyny to show how complex humans navigated a relationship with God — the One who is merciful and loving, but also beyond our grasp. Her words help scripture achieve its purpose and break our hearts open.

Debbie Blue's Manificat is a powerful collection of reflections on the profoundly important role that women have played throughout the history of our faith. Her insights into the stories of these women and the lessons that their lives teach us will challenge and inspire everyone who picks up this book, inviting us to look again at many familiar stories with fresh eyes and from a new perspective and be captivated by the prophetic wisdom and faithfulness of these women of faith.

Debbie Blue has a special knack for observing every corner of the text. She considers them up and down, she peers into every nook and cranny, there is no detail that eludes her gaze. She unmasks malicious patriarchal interpretations and brings forward fresh approaches. She gets out of comfort zones, which is the most appealing trait of her contributions: you receive what you are not waiting for. You might go along her writing thinking that you are going to find what it usually has been and is said about the text, but then you discover that such is not the case. And you give her a nod of assent.

In this book, at times I laughed and other times came close to tears. Storylines are followed and characters are explored with dexterity and attention to the text and its interpreters, including the contemporary audience. Blue displays phenomenal skill in engaging the audience with the biblical story and characters while casting them in fresh perspectives.

I start a sermon by Debbie Blue with a sense of adventure and expectation. She leads me to see biblical texts with new eyes. She unrelentingly searches for the yes of God’s love even in texts that appear only as a no. That is not to say her sermons are gentle—all warm fuzzies. She, like the God revealed by Jesus Christ, lovingly confronts the many ways we have strayed. These sermons on women in the Bible give her ample opportunity to do all I have said above.

In a religion that has historically not been so considerate of women, Debbie Blue is masterful at finding the cracks in the patriarchal foundation and blowing them up with homiletic dynamite. (Ruth actually proposes to Boaz? Wisdom can be personified as God's nursing child? Mother Mary is a threat to monotheism?) The rubble is something glorious, a reminder that we do not have to be good or pure or male to be loved and embody Love in return.

A thorough reading of this book, going through every single story, actually is a necessity. We as readers start to see the cracks in the patriarchal reading of the biblical text. Thus the bodies, desires, blissful ambiances, anger, power, struggles of women well up to the surface: women in the Bible, their faces and voices. As she goes mentioning them by their names, Debbie touches off a creative process that helps us to be and stay with them by means of the word, to undermine weighty historic mandates, to dismantle prejudices, to abandon naivety.