PLEASE NOTE: This was written in response to the "I'd rather have a Proverbs 31 woman than a Victoria's Secret model" movement on Facebook. A post better explaining the issue at hand, detailing the problems I have with the movement, can be found here.
---
Sometimes, you feel something must be said. Sometimes, the only words are poetic ones.
this one's for the sisters
this one's for the sisters. this one's for the Rahabs that God redeems, for the Ruths that dare to go to the fields, for the Esthers that became queens, for the Deborahs that exercised judgement, for the Marys that said, "Be it unto me," for the Sarahs who bore in old age, for the Hannahs who never stopped praying, for the Tamars who dared to obey God above man, for the Lydias who believed, for the Miriams who sing songs of deliverance, for the Leahs who went unloved, for the Rachels who were waited for, for the Annas who waited on God, for the women at the wells, for the women who go to the empty tomb, for the women who stand by the cross, and even, yes even, the women of Proverbs 31.
oh yes, this one's for the sisters.
i am here to make a confession before you, to tell you that i have grown tired of a simple and trite faith, a faith that is reducible to twenty-one verses of Scripture, as if the sum and breadth of a woman created in the Image---the Image--- could be reducible to three hundred and twenty words, that the whole that it is to be Woman could be no more than a handful of phrases and common graces and that wife and mother were the only titles that a woman of faith could carry with pride.
this one's for the sisters.
are you hearing me, sisters in Christ? do you hear what i'm saying to you? i'm saying that you have been made in the image of God and while Proverbs 31 may be a beautiful representation of a certain kind of woman with a certain kind of faith it is only a certain kind and not the kind. for if we believe the whole of the Scripture we must believe that God hath made everything beautiful in its time such that all the women of the Scripture from Eve to Lydia, in their diversity of forms, are also to be considered exalted and praised and that God in His mercy has made us all for diversity and journey.
and this one's for the sisters.
journey, because our one Christ called us to follow and to follow does not mean to take hold of a single passage of the Text and strip it of context and call those who follow it the ones who are holy. no! holy is the description of those men and women alike who take the whole of the Text and the whole of their God and chase after Him into the wide-reaches of His creation and grow and shift and change and look not to circumstance or status or position to determine who they are for they know of Whom they are and that, for them, is enough.
this one's for the sisters.
it's a simple thing, really. i say, this one's for the sisters: this one's for the woman called to be celibate. praise God, He is bigger than Proverbs 31. this one's for the woman who can't have children. praise God, He is bigger than Proverbs 31. this one's for the wife and mother, exemplifying all the qualities of Proverbs 31, I imagine you would agree, praise God, He is bigger than Proverbs 31.
and this one's for the sisters.
so let me say in boldness as a man under the authority of of our one Creator that when i imagine the kind of woman i hope to marry she is not found in a single place of Scripture but is marked by the imprint of hundreds of pages of a life lived in the fullness of the Holy Ghost, a woman who dares to be what God has called her to be and is so in love with Him that the whole of His Word is her delight and that her fullness is not contingent on twenty-one lines of qualifiication but on her certainty in her Maker. because, as I have said, this one's for the sisters.
so to widow and orphan, and wife and mother, daughter and nun, i say alike: bless you who pursue Him, bless you who long for Him, bless you who dare to serve Him, bless you who spur men to be better unto Him, bless you who challenge all to honor Him, bless you who dare speak the name of Jesus as if you knew Him.
because of all the things i could ever hope for in a woman, there is nothing more precious than that she knows Him.
and that is why, i return to this: this one's for the sisters.
---