Hi!
I'm Oprah, and welcome to the Oprah Winfrey show. Today I have put
together a very special show. I am honored to have the opportunity to
sit down and speak with four amazing and very inspirational women from
the Bible. The four women I have on my show today are Sarah,
Queen Esther, Ruth, and Jael.
All four of these women have very inspiring and moving stories. One
very important thing these women have in common is they all faced
many faith-testing obstacles in their lives which they had to overcome.
Each one of these women had a close relationship with God at some point
in their lives, and all of them give credit to him for the power they
received in order to be able to overcome.
My first guest is Sarah. Sarah is featured in the first book of the
Bible, Genesis. Sarah was married to Abraham, from the land of Ur where the Chaldean
people lived. They were very much in love. They tried very hard to
reproduce and have offspring, but it just wasn't working out for them.
God told them to be patient and to wait for it, and Sarah would
eventually get pregnant. Sarah struggled with this, because as we all
know, patience is a very hard thing to grasp. Her husband Abraham also
struggled with patience. This whole scenario tested both of their
faiths greatly. But Sarah will talk more on that later.
Following Sarah will be my next guest,
Queen Esther. Queen Esther had many different obstacles of her
own. Esther was a Jewish woman who married Ahasuerus, the King of Persia, who
was not Jewish.One HUGE problem was that Haman, one of King Ahasuerus' chief advisers, was actually
plotting to kill all of the Jewish people in the kingdom of Ahasuerus. For Queen Esther, this
was a complete and total crisis. Because she was Jewish, Queen Esther
was faced with some of the biggest trials of her life trying to choose
between her husband and being queen, and saving her people. She had to
be brave and put herself into a very vulnerable and scary position. As
it turned out, Queen Esther chose to take a stand and run the
risk of losing her life for the good of her people. I am so
astonished by Queen Esther's motivation and unselfishness she had in
order to save the lives of her people.
Then, after Queen Esther, I will have Ruth
on. Ruth led a different life than that of Queen Esther. She lived in a
time when her town was going through an extreme famine, and she also
lost her husband. But regardless of all of her hardships, she stayed
very close to her mother-in-law, Naomi. They took on many challenges,
like moving to a new town and starting and establishing new lives for
themselves.
Finally, after Ruth, I will have Jael,
a brave woman who God chose to carry out a very important and scary
task for him, regardless of her being a woman. Although her story was
not a large part of the Bible, Jael
still had a very significant role and she became a very important
figure for women to follow. By using her, God was able to prove to
everyone that there is no specific gender that has to carry out his
plans. You can find Jael's story in the book of Judges.
We have a very exciting show
today! We have to go to a commercial break but stay tuned and when we
come back we will bring out our first guest Sarah!