I had no idea how she would live up to her name.

Hannah, after all, was a weeping, trusting woman, who longed for the blessing of children…and who longed to see her children bless the Lord. Her faith brought about the prophetic voice (Samuel) through whom God would give us the house of David, the line of our Lord Jesus.

And "Maria," of course, is the most renowned woman's name in history, the name of our Christ's mother. And I see much of the quiet, fearsome beauty the Lord praised in her also in the face of my bride.

Today is Maria, my Maria's, birthday. I can't help but think today about the first time I ever saw her. My cousins wanted me to meet her and so they took me to the local mall for a kind of fashion show put on by the local department store. Maria and my cousin, both seniors in high school and both of whom worked at the store, were modeling some of the clothes that winter for the store's spring line.

I really liked her, but I wasn't sure. After all, Maria was a high school girl and, though I was only three years older, I was in college, and in the middle of a frenetic job with a congressional campaign. I was too old for her. But, still, for weeks after that show, I'd find myself walking into that department store and looking at her picture, with those of the other employee/scholarship recipients, hanging on the wall. I'd look at that picture and wonder what she was like.

Sixteen years, fourteen wedding anniversaries, and four children later, now I know.

Even after I agreed to let my cousin introduce us, I almost stopped it. On our first date, I almost turned around in her driveway when I saw the "Bush/Quayle ‘92″ sign in the yard. I was campaigning all over south Mississippi for a Democratic congressman, and I was going out with a Republican?

More than that, I worried she was "too quiet," as I explained it to my cousin, too gentle, for the rough world of politics where I planned to live my life and career. I had illusions that I was going to be governor of Mississippi one day, and I needed a wife who had the "fire in the belly" to speak on the campaign stump, pressure donors into giving more, and attack back at political opponents. I needed a partner who was a Mississippi version of (at least the 1990s version of) Hillary Rodham Clinton, I guess I was thinking.

Maria didn't seem to pursue me back, and that bothered me. Even though she knew from my cousins what was going on in their deliberations, she didn't call. She didn't drop hints. She didn't flirt. She didn't loudly fight for attention. She didn't seem like she was anxiously waiting for me to pursue her. She just seemed quiet.

I didn't like that.

But I couldn't help but love her. I thought I would just toughen her up one campaign at a time. I might have been tempted to turn the car around on that first date night, but as we drove down the beach on the way to the restaurant I knew I would marry her, if she'd have me.

Things didn't turn out the way I planned my life then. The Lord pulled me out of politics and rekindled a call to ministry. We've lived together through some unbelievably happy (and one miserable) ministry experiences. We were together through infertility, miscarriages, adoptions, births, and a lot more.

We're not a "power couple." That's because I don't know how to get anywhere close to the power she has.

Hannah's power in Scripture is not in horses or chariots or in plans or in schemes. Her strength, she sings, "is exalted in the Lord" as her heart "exults in the Lord" (1 Sam. 2:1).

Our Lord's mother first shows up in the story of Scripture as a picture of submission, "Let it be according to your word." Mary doesn't summon the angel to her well in Nazareth. She doesn't, like Saul, "kick against the goads." She, with almost preternatural calm, believes what Eve (and Eve's mate) didn't believe before: that God's will is for her good. And when Mary cries out against injustice and evil, she sings. She sings, in fact, a song that echoes the song of Hannah long before (compare 1 Sam. 2:1-10 with Lk. 1:46-55).

Is it any wonder God's messenger and God's Spirit pronounce the Virgin to be a "favored one" (Lk. 1:27) and as "blessed among women" (Lk. 1:42)? She exhibits exactly what the Spirit tells us through the Apostle Peter is that "imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious" (1 Pet. 3:4).

That quietness and gentleness our Father loves in our Lord's mother is not a mousiness; it's not being muzzled by her culture or certainly by any man. The quiet spirit comes from the fact that she "does not fear anything that is frightening" (1 Pet. 3:6).

My Maria's quietness, I have recognized in retrospect, was peace. She trusted the Lord to provide her with a husband, with a family, or with whatever else he had for her. The quietness was also submission. She was submissive to her future husband, whoever he was to be, and not to any other man. She guarded her affections, her attachments, and her expectations.

That kind of fearless quietness is the joyful reason that, while I've worried about all kinds of things in my life, I've never (not once!) worried about Maria divorcing me or mistreating the children or flying into a hot rage or a cold war. It's the reason she was able to grieve the loss of children through miscarriage even as she planned baby showers for women who had gotten pregnant around the same time she did, and why she'd be there at her friends' baby delivery wards with flowers and genuine happiness.

And her gentle power is what I hope is seen clearly by the four young men we're raising together. They'll grow up in a culture of women pictured as having value based simply on what men think of them, for their sexual attractiveness or sexual availability or their earning power or the sheer force of their wills. Even in the so-called "conservative" subculture in America, the exact same phenomenon persists in the culture warrior princesses on the talking-head argument shows on television.

Every day, though, my sons see a peaceful woman who submits to the Lord and to a man…but only to one man.

And through it all, she's shown me what it means that the woman is "the glory of man" (1 Cor. 11:7). I find her glorious, and through her I've seen what Christic glory is, for men and women, not self-seeking assertion but Father-trusting humility (Phil. 2:5-11).

On her birthday, I am thankful to God for giving me this gentle, mysterious, life-affirming, powerful woman as my wife. Blessed is she among women, and blessed is the One who gave her life.

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I want to hear your ethics problems.

This morning we're launching a brand new, fun project here called "Q&E: Questions and Ethics." I'm raring to go.

Here's the way it works. If you're thinking about an ethical dilemma (big or small) that's got you thinking, send it to me. Maybe it's something you heard a co-worker talking about, and you wonder: "If that were me, what would I do, as a Christian?"

At Q&E, I'll try to answer the question (or question the answers) here from a kingdom-oriented, Christ-centered vantage point.

The question could be about anything from whether you ought to let your teenage son get a tattoo to whether you ought to use IVF to get pregnant to whether it's a lie to tell your Mom she's gaining weight when she asks you dead out.

It'll work kind of like "The Ethicist" column by Randy Cohen does over at the New York Times magazine, except, well, completely different.

Here's why.

I get a lot of "Hey, what should I do if…" questions, and a lot of them are really thoughtful questions. They force me to think about things in my own walk with Christ, and they prod me on to being a better man, husband, father, preacher, writer, bureaucrat, etc. I think our discussion of some of these questions could prompt us to think.

Here's how.

Send me an email to questions@russellmoore.com with your question. Or, if you prefer send a video link (YouTube, Vimeo, or just off the camera on your computer) of you asking the question. Or, if you use Twitter, you can tweet the question to me @drmoore.

Some ground rules.

I'm not going to use your name, unless you explicitly ask me to. Otherwise, you'll be "Confused in Corinth" or "Tempted in Topeka" or whatever (just like old Ann Landers used to do it, if you remember back that far).

I reserve the right to change some minor details to protect your identity and I reserve the right to combine several, similar questions into one synthesis test case.

I won't respond to you personally by email on these. I'd love to, but can't.

I won't answer all of them right away. There's no timeline. I may save some up while I think about the answer, and it might take me a while. So please don't send me the "Why won't you answer my questions" email.

Also, there are lots of people with similar problems to yours. Don't assume if you read something on here that I'm talking about you. Sometimes I'll address an issue in some venue, and someone will huff and protest, "How did you know about me." There are all kinds of Bible verses I could refer you to on that one, folks, but Carly Simon lyrics will do for now.

I'm all for a frenzy of discussion on the comments section. Some of these will be "Thus saith the Lord" type answers: "Should I throw kittens in a wood chipper, for the fun and amusement of my friends" (and stay tuned for how I'll answer that one). Some will be more "Thus leaneth Moore" type answers: "Should I tell my fiance that I always prayed that I'd wind up married to his brother?"

I'll answer some of them with text, here on the site. I'll answer some of them audibly on the podcast (see the link over on the edge of this site for how to sign up for the "Moore to the Point" podcast). The decision as to which is which will be completely arbitrary, dependent more on my thyroid levels that day than on any strategic plan.

So, email me your ethical questions and dilemmas, and let's get "Q&E" rolling out the gates.

And, by the way, my mother is not gaining weight, in case you thought that my example above was from real life.

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Since my previous post on young preachers, some have asked what kind of resources are available for critiquing someone's preaching. The best critiques are just informal, "Hey, here's what I think" kind of dialogue with more mature, more experienced men.

Some of those kinds of folk, though, have asked what kind of form we use here. In my Christian Preaching class at Southern Seminary, we use a Preaching Review Form for the students in the room to evaluate their fellow preachers.

The form is designed for three purposes:

1. To assess the preacher and the sermon on several key issues
2. To provide specific thoughts on strengths and weaknesses of the preaching event
3. To leave the preacher with tangible feedback that can later be reflected on after they preach

Preaching review forms can end up being as self-determining as a pre-fab spiritual gifts inventory, unless there are people in your life who love you enough that they are willing to be frank, and unless you are humble enough to receive correction.

But I have found that a preaching review form like this one can be helpful. I appreciate the great sermon review form that Sojourn Community Church in Louisville uses, and we integrated some of what they do into this one.

Preaching is expositional exorcism. If the young preacher wants to sharpen his sword for this spiritual battle, using a preaching review form might help.

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Your first few sermons are always terrible, no matter who you are. If you think your first few sermons are great, you're probably self-deceived. If the folks in your home church think your first few sermons are great, it's probably because they love you and they're proud of you. If it's a good, supportive church there's as much objectivity there as a grandparent evaluating the "I Love You Grandma" artwork handed to them by the five year-old in their family.

So your first set of sermons, unless you're very atypical, are probably really, really bad.

So what?

The great thing about Christian ministry is that Jesus doesn't start all over again with his church every generation. He gives older men in ministry who shape, disciple, and direct younger men in ministry. This includes (although it's not limited to) critiquing your sermons.

Your sermons will be critiqued. You want them to be critiqued, and harshly.

Now you don't want them critiqued harshly by your congregations (and a critical attitude toward your pastor's preaching, church members, is not a fruit of the Spirit). But you want them critiqued, and you want them critiqued now.

Your sermons will be highly critiqued early on in your ministry, when you're still being shaped, or you'll just be left alone.

The great preachers you hear or that you read about in your church history books are not almost never those who were preaching great sermons from the very beginning of their ministries.

Great preachers are the ones who preach really bad sermons. The difference is that they preach really bad sermons when they're young, and are sharpened for life by critique.

Mediocre preachers are those who start off with sermons that are, eh, pretty good, but they're never critiqued and thus never grow.

So if you're early on in ministry and you preach a bad sermon, so what? You're in a train of previously bad preachers that extends from Moses to Aaron to Simon Peter to about every good gospel preacher you've ever heard with your own ears.

Your bad sermon says nothing about your future. If you've got folks in your life saying, "Hey, that was a really bad sermon," that does indicate something about your future, so praise God for it. It's probably a sign that God has something for you to say, for the rest of your life.

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