5 minutes with Amy

Tell us a little about you

I grew up in central Texas and arrived in Australia over four years ago by way of Colorado and Scotland, where I did my doctoral studies. I belong to my wonderful, servant-hearted church family at St John's Anglican in Canberra.

Do you have a favourite Bible passage? If so, what is it and why?

Ecclesiastes 3, especially verse 11: God makes everything beautiful in its time. As a whole, Ecclesiastes gives us a boots-on-the-ground view of human life before God in all its vexed mortality and grace. It doesn't mention Jesus explicitly, yet I read it as Christological: it offers an incarnational vantage of our life before God in which we live suspended in the flow of time unable to determine or control its ultimate outcome, but trusting in hope that God will make something beautiful of it all. In this it harkens forward to the hope of the New Testament: that the tears and violent separation of the cross will end in resurrection and reunion in the garden.

How do you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus?

My church family, who encourages and inspires me and reminds me of truth; regular scripture reading and personal prayer; regular prayer and meals with my wonderful housemates and sisters in the faith; walks in the beauty of God's creation; and - by God's grace - the fact that study of God's truth gets to thread throughout my paid working life, replete with enriching conversations with my dear colleagues, who also inspire and cheer me on in the faith.

You've just published a fantastic book for the church along with your co-editors, God's Yes to Women. What would you like the next generation of Christian women to know?

That there is nothing off the table for God's Spirit to do through them in service to his church and in witness to the gospel, and to be open to his movement through and claim on their lives.

What’s one thing that you love about your local church?

As mentioned above, it's an army of servants. Every evening after our 6pm service there are regular saints who prepare and quite literally serve food to those gathered, with a consistent clean-up crew. And then there are the countless, and often hidden, ways that they serve one another throughout the week with meals, encouragement, prayer, and other forms of burden-bearing.

What did you learn about God during a time in your life that you found hard?

Maybe less about God than about life with God: the importance of gratitude, of living eucharistically: of giving thanks to God for the broken and beautiful things that he gives to nourish us, which are in some way mysteriously also the gift of his very self. Along with this, I continually learn the importance of living day by day. 'Days' - not years or even weeks - is the maximum temporal horizon we can handle at a given time. Christian discipleship is a daily picking up of our cross, expectant for our daily bread, aware that each day has enough trouble of its own.

What are you passionate about?

My two favourite things in the world, which go best together, are good food and good conversation. Another passion is Christ's bride, the church: to see her healthy, thriving, and winsome in her witness to her bridegroom. (As it happens, good food and good conversation are both assets to that end).

What do you enjoy doing when you rest?

Hiking in the beauty of God's creation (I do pine for the Colorado Rockies from the hills of Canberra), reading a good book, and the aforementioned food and conversation.