I chose the subjects and circumstances for these stories to make them examples of transcendence. I illustrated this transcendence in two ways. The first was  transcendence in time – the sequence of act and consequence that defines the path of the story. The second was the transcendence in Jesus’ relationship with the women he encountered. Rebekah, Johanna, Miriam and Mary are all faced with challenges in their lives that they experience as too overwhelming to handle by themselves. There may be other characters in the stories trying to comfort and support them, but they each feel deserted, defeated and alone. Even when they cry out to Yahweh, His lack of immediate relief for their distress feels to them as if He doesn’t hear them.

It is when they cannot understand what to do next that Jesus comes to them. In each case he first listens to them. He empathizes with their emotional stresses. He accepts their descriptions of their circumstances. He responds with compassion, with clarity, and with a point of view different from the one they each seized upon. He gives each one exactly what is necessary in the deepest part of her soul to continue with courage, strength and gentle joy.

To transcend anything is, for me, to rise above it, to climb to some higher vantage point that allows a person to see what was hidden from the lower vantage point of life’s daily travail.

The story is told of a small party of adventurers hacking their way through a dense jungle. Tired, hungry and blistered they come to a clearing. As they rest they hear a helicopter approach. It lands, and one of the party climbs aboard. When the helicopter rises the adventurer can see many things: hills, streams, villages and, in the distance, the mountain that he knows intuitively is their goal. He also sees, about one hundred yards from the trail they had been hacking and running parallel to it, an asphalt road. When the helicopter lands again, the adventurer takes his party, turns ninety degrees, and hacks the short distance to the roadway.

This, to me, is transcendence.