Calling all men and women:  today is International Women's Day!  Why should set aside a day to celebrate women?  Do we not celebrate women every day of the year?  Absolutely.  Historically, however, women have faced oppression on scales to which most men simply cannot relate.  A complex web of tradition, sexism, condescension, and patriarchy has created a world in which, even today, many women are considered to be second-class citizens, and in some cases, tragically, less than human.




     Politics and culture aside, however, I believe we do well to consider why the human race is composed of men and women.  The reason is far more than mere procreation.  The most profound reason for two human genders is that, bottom line, men and women need each other, need each other in more ways than they can individually or corporately imagine.  Humanity cannot be fully human unless male and female are flourishing, unless both genders are able to be all that they can, before God, be.  As Genesis makes clear, humanness is male and female, and we are duty bound to achieve its fullness.
     Do we have a long way to go?  Sure.  But we are not mere dollops of masculinity and femininity tossed into an accidental cosmos, nor are we male and female, complementary in gender, without reason.  We are as we are because of God.
     And God wants nothing more than our human completeness.