Dirt or Diamond?

"An excellent wife who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels." -  Proverbs 31 :10 

Have you ever seen a ruby? Not cut and polished bobble perched on a ladies hand; I’m talking about a ruby just lying around on the ground? I didn’t think so. Rubies, diamonds, and other precious metals generally don’t pop out the ground like dandelions. It’s quite a process to get them to the surface.  The ideal condition for the formation of diamonds exists some 93 miles below the earth’s surface. When you hear about sites where you can “mine your own gems”, that’s usually the bed of an inactive volcano, which has provided a way for these precious rocks to spring to the earth surface. Then you simply dig and sift through mounds of dirt and you might find a gem.  I recently read an article by a man who makes his living this way, he sifts through thousands of lbs. of dirt weekly, and he considers it a good month if he finds one gem.  That’s a lot of sifting through crud to get to one diamond!  Yep, that sounds like dating, not much has changed in the 3,000 years since King Lemuel’s mother gave him similar advice. Dirt you can find my son, a virtuous woman though, that’s going take some digging.

Truly the process of creating a virtuous woman is much similar to the one needed to create a gemstone, ideal conditions and lots of pressure exerted on it over a prolonged period of time. I know in my own life my journey of attempting to walk in the way of this virtuous woman has been a long a winding path, and now I am raising four daughters and calling them to the challenge as well. We all spring forth our of our mother’s wombs steeped in original sin, desiring the very things that will destroy our lives and families, and now our depraved natures have been aided by the scourge of feminism and we are pretty much left with mounds of dirt. Sometimes the task of sifting through it all seems like an overwhelming task.

I’d like to talk about what have been the largest challenges in my own gemstone becoming process and the unfortunate struggles my own daughters seem to face.  My largest challenge is contentment! Hands down, don’t have to ask me twice, no need to think it over; my “thorn in the side” is not being content. How odd is that? I doubt a diamond sets around think, “oh poor me, here I am in the dirt, under appreciated, my dreams never realized, blah blah blah” No!  It’s just sitting there, doing its thing, take it or leave it in the dirt, it couldn’t care less. Not women though, we need validation, “me” time, titles, paychecks, all sort of man-made credentials. Usually these pursuits led use directly away from our God given mandate as women. Our feminist world says “You go girl!” God says stay and be still, keep yourself at home. Our world says “I am woman hear me roar! I can do any job a man can!” God’s word says Eve’s curse that she shares with her daughters will be to desire her husband’s life and position.  We are born filthy rags and then we reject the process God’s had ordained for us to walk through to become diamonds! We have the opportunity to be shining examples of God’s glory, and instead we insist on the dirt, and we will never find contentment this way.

So what pressures to we need to conform unto the beauty God has for us? What are our ideal conditions? I think each of us have different challenges, but there are some woman-wide. I believe contentment is one. One of the best decisions we ever made as parents was to out-law Barbie in the Via house, no career dolls in immodest clothing, flaunting their perfect bodies, driving their perfect convertibles, and living in their three story dream houses with elevators. That’s not reality folks; give your daughter a baby doll and a play kitchen. Teach her to find joy in the ordinary and precious tasks of life! Don’t breed discontentment, it will find her on its own, but dear parent don’t aide the enemy by esteeming ideals in movies, toys, and books, that can never be attained in real life.  Secondly we need to redefine beauty, what does God call beauty? Sacrifice, gentleness, patience, kindness, hard work, joy, care for others, even servants! The list of virtues God extols for the Virtuous woman goes on and on! In jockeying for man’s position we have been robbed of the beauty of feminine life and it’s benefits. Children teach patience, like nothing else on this earth, the raising of children will teach sacrifice and patience. Devoting yourself to the love and care of your family and home is the very essence of kindness and its hard work. Having the time to love the elderly or needy around you because you’re not consumed by your own “dreams” will not only be a blessing to your own life, but God says it’s the same as doing a service for Him.

As daughters of God we need to wake up and throw of the shackles of feminism. The business that seems of consume our lives. We have this program the kids must do, this store we must shop, this bible study we must attend. Keep at home, love your children, love your husband, be hospitable. That's ALL, A-L-L, God has asked of us, the reason we are stressed is because we are living contrary to the way of our designer. The slavery of living in our own sinful desires instead of following God’s process for us has cursed us to a life as dirt! We can be beautiful precious fixtures in the lives of our husband, families, churches, and community, but we can’t do it our own way. You can fool with dirt all you want, you can make mud and various other things, but unless a seed is introduced to it nothing of use will grow, until pressure is exerted on it the composition will not change. Dirt or diamond dear sister, which one will you be?  

Proverbs 31:10

 “A virtuous woman who can find her?
       She is worth far more than rubies”  Proverbs 31:10

Mission Impossible?

            Have you ever noticed that Christians, who have been part of the club for a while, have their own vocabulary? The "virtuous woman” is just such a  phrase, and it has been seared into our quasi social Christian vocabulary. Unfortunately virtuous isn’t exactly the literal translation of the word in the original text. The original word transliterated is “chayil”, it is a masculine noun, which means strength, might, efficiency, wealth, and it even has the connotation of military force.  I was surprised to learn the thought behind the word myself as I researched this topic, but then again who has the nerve to preach such a thing from the pulpit on Mother’s Day?

Regardless of wether or not the concept of such a strong woman makes us uncomfortable is irrelevant the truth is that this is essence of what scripture says. Now I am not suggesting that women should be rough and aggressive, I think the whole of scripture is very clear that is not God’s best for us. I just think it is interesting that even the most genuine of Christian leaders have difficulty reconciling the concept of such a strong and capable female with the gentle qualities that are easier to swallow.

            So, just who was this virtuous woman, this iron woman? Did she really live? Could one human woman really embody all these noble qualities? The honest answer is that no one really knows if this passage is a historical account of one woman’s life or just the best hopes of a mother for her son. Of this we are certain, these verses are the writing’s of King Lemuel and each word was inspired by God Himself. King Lemuel calls this entire chapter the “oracle” or mystery that his mother told him. I beg you take a pause here and read the first half of the chapter of Proverbs 31, it’s quite a challenge in itself. This wise woman encourages her son to defend the needy and the rights of the afflicted, a true call to selflessness.

            Perhaps the original virtuous woman was King Lemuel’s own mother, she was obviously a woman of great wisdom who could sum up in a few verses all her son needed to know in order to rule a kingdom. However I believe the truth of the mystery of the Proverbs 31 woman is that she is an ideal, a goal, something to strive for. Within the attributes of this woman we see the best performances of all the roles we play. She is rooted in faith, her husband’s true helpmate, mother of the year, and in general the holy grail of femininity. If these passages do not allude to an actual woman that existed, should we consider the ability to accomplish all these virtues ourselves to be mission impossible? Yes, we should.

            The nature of humanity, in its sin, is that perfection will always elude us. Our sinful nature is the antithesis of nobility, the hope of Christ is that we are not abandoned to this fate. Jesus Christ has done more for the liberation of women that Sanger and Steinem ever dreamed. Our Lord loving cared for the woman caught in the act of adultery that was thrown down naked in the streets by those who were charged with her spiritual well being. As the spiritual leaders of her day bellowed for her death they seemed to forget that it takes two to tango. Perhaps her lover was among their own number, nevertheless Jesus forgives her and gently tells her to go and sin no more. Could this woman actually go the rest of her life without committing a single sin? Of course she could not. However I believe after staring into the holy eyes of God Himself she spent the remainder of her life trying.

            If it is mission impossible for any one person to live up to the standard of these verses, why write  about it? I write these words and I live every day of my life with the belief that God only asks me to give Him my brokenness, and He is responsible for the outcome. In the 2 Corinthians 13:11 Paul encourages us to “aim for perfection”, these inspired words from a man who laments that he is the chief of sinners. The reality of the Christian life is that we simply cast our meager efforts and prayers towards heaven and God fashions them into something that can be used for His glory. 

            The concept of hard work without a guarantee of instant reward is hard for us to swallow in this day and age, especially Americans. We have become a culture of instant gratification.  The concept of exerting significant effort for the simple sake of obedience seems foreign to us. So without any promise of success why should we try? We should attempt the impossible because we should meet each day with a fresh commitment to walk in the grace and strength of our Lord, and leave the results to Him.

            So, to answer the 3,000 year old question, “who can find a virtuous woman?” I can. I have personally seen her. Her virtue of kindness lives in my mother who spends countless hours a day talking with elderly folk in her church who are lonely and haven’t anyone else to speak with. I have seen her strength in my friend Rebecca who eluded an iron grace and confidence in the Lord while her infant daughter battled cancer.  In my friend Pam, I have seen her stretch out her hand of kindness across two continents to give two orphans a home. Finally I have seen her in my friend Carrie who put aside her personal pain after a miscarriage to encourage me through the final days of a difficult pregnancy. In every tear wiped, meal prepared, prayer offered up, every lullaby sung, and every child welcomed home, she shines. Oh, yes, without a shadow of a doubt I have seen her!

She is not some fictional character that we should deem unattainable; she is a watermark for all women to strive for. Her worth is more valuable than jewels. Frankly jewels are just rocks that are slightly prettier than the other rocks, if you think about it. However God in His infinite wisdom created common rock aesthetically unappealing but the rare ones are the highly desired jewels. Gemstones are nothing more than the prom queens of the quarry, but we pay more for them than gravel because we have assigned them more worth. God has assigned the worth of these virtues clearly given in Proverbs 31 as more valuable than our human standard of riches, and I believe we should strive for this perfection.

The verses that open the chapter of scripture found in Proverbs 31, begins as a loving admonition from a mother to her son, and they remain so even to this day. I am training my sons to seek out such women, despite the fact that currently some of my boys think girls have cooties. I am raising my girls to walk in her steps. Every day I am aiming for these virtues of perfection and when I fail, I praise the God of grace that He catches me in His mercy. The Scriptures compare the Christian life to a yoke, a race, a war, and I think somehow we’ve missed the picture despite numerous illustrations. The American church has sanitized the gospel in order to make it more comfortable for us. We attempt to make God’s directives to us simple and appealing. The reality is that the Christian life is hard work, it’s physically, mentally, and spiritually challenging, and we are commanded to rise to the occasion.

I will never be perfection on this earth, but I will strive for it nonetheless. I must not use the loftiness of the goal to deter me from trying to reach it. A difficult challenge drives the ambitious and serves as an excuse for the lazy. One of my favorite quotes is from Thomas Edison, he said "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

 I want you to imagine yourself ten years from now looking back over your life, don’t you want to be able to say that you resigned each one of those days, every 3,652 of them to God’s will. I want to be able to say I lived every day to its fullest and cast off the fear of failure. I am not sure how many days I have left in this life, but God has numbered my days and ordained each one of them. When the days of my life are spent, it is my prayer that I can say as Paul did:

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” 2 Timothy 4: 7

So are you ready to work? At the end of each blog in the proverbs 31 project series, you will find a section like the following one. It will give you practical ways to apply the ideas of this chapter.

Read It: 

Read the following passages and pray that God would give you the courage to live them out.

1 Corinthians 9:24 – “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize”.

2 Timothy 4:7 – “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Hebrews 12:1-3 – “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great    cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

Colossians 1:10 -  “That you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;”

Work It:

Pray that God will open your eyes and allow you to see the women around you who are living out God’s purpose. Pray that God will send someone to walk beside you in this challenge and to mentor you.

Ask God to show you some way to glorify Him today. Imagine yourself reporting in at the end of the day, signing off on the work done. You can wash a dish out of drudgery, or out of worship. The issue is a matter of the heart.

Lastly, sincerely pray that God would show you the “weight” in your life, the wastes of your time and energy that keep you from giving God and your family all of yourself. This is a hard prayer to if done so in earnest, but as heart wrenching as the process may be, sanctification is not optional in the life of a believer.

A Lost Nobility

It was a bizarre introduction; several years ago a gentleman from my church was introducing me to a new family and suddenly realized he didn’t actually know my name, so he jokingly said this is Mrs. Ray. You see, I am a pianist, and as such I have spent the majority of my adult years at the keys before, during, and after a church service.  Often people talk to my husband and he points in my direction at the piano and tells them I am his wife, when people finally get around to staying more than five minutes after service and meet me post-prelude they think of me as Mrs. Ray. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My greatest sense of accomplishment comes from being Mrs. Ray. I enjoy being aligned with this man, playing for his team so to speak. Unfortunately, I haven’t always felt this way. When I was young, both physically and spiritually, I wanted my own name, my own entity. I wasn’t satisfied being the wife of a good man, oh no, I wanted recognition for being me and for whatever talents I perceived I possessed. I hadn’t been taught by my family or church that the whole “they two shall become one flesh” wasn’t poetic metaphor, that the Lord intended it to be taken literally. So for years I tried to severe my identity from my husband’s and in doing so damaged our marriage and my own relationship with God.  Then like the pinnacle of all the beautiful stories of my life, God intervened, bringing people into my life to show me the path I needed to be on.  They began to teach me about the nobility of being a wife, it's a lost art in our post-modern, post-christian society, but if we are to thrive as people of God we will have to learn this lost nobility.

It’s all in who you know,  this cliché’ may be modern but the principle is ancient. If you study the ancient world at all you will see Family Dynasties ruling China, Celtic Clans with ruling Chieftains’ passing succession down by paternity, the ever so popular fairy tale of Camelot, begins with a secret son born of the King’s blood that takes the throne and unites the Britons. Family is everything, in every society, in every age, to return to the vernacular, families rule! Strong patriarchs, raising strong sons in succession make nations strong, but as every chess player knows, if you compromise the queen the game is over. That’s what we are seeing in our current culture, we are compromising the queen, stealing her value and nobility.

In ages past to be the wife of a good man, was a title of honor, a woman’s first name was rarely used in polite society by a gentleman who wasn’t a close relation. A woman was addressed by her standing in society, and she was standing next to her husband.  I can guarantee that some of you are already typing scathing responses in your mind about how I must devalue women and so forth, but take a deep breath and read on. Anytime there is a fundamental shift in a social paradigm, we have to ask ourselves three questions:

What was changed? Who changed it? What was their motive for change?

The change is obvious, women want independence, control, they want to be in charge, this desire is nothing new. Take a cursory look at Genesis, and you will see God telling Eve that as a result of the fall “her desire will be for her husband (more accurately translated for her husband’s position), but he will rule over her”, sounds like a curse alright. Take two newly minted sinners, place them in a romantic environment and tell them that their very natures are going to make them desire to rip each other’s heads off. That explains a lot, it certainly clarifies the motives of the feminist, she doesn’t want to be ruled over, she wants her husband’s position. It’s human nature to desire what we cannot have, our sin drives us to covetousness, and we women think autonomy is the holy grail of guilty pleasures, it’s innate and inescapable in our unredeemed form . This desire has been present for all human history, look at the story of the Egyptian Pharaoh Hatsheput; she was a female ruler over Egypt. She desired power and position above all else, this led her to concoct an outrageous tale about her divinity, then she dropped all titles related to being female, subsequently assuming the title of Pharaoh, eventually she even wore a fake beard! This lady was invested in her ideology to say the least.

The feminists have done the same, step by step, they have concocted an outrageous lie, then systematically stripped away what it meant to be female, and assumed male leadership. My question is where did this leave the queen? You may say she’s on the throne, autonomous, and doing fine! Perhaps if the curse of desire for her husband’s position was her only longing she would be fulfilled, or if our lives were just this brief vapor on earth and there was not eternity or account to be given, but neither of these are reality. You see inside every little girl thrives the dream of a fairytale, Prince Charming, true love, the Castle, the whole nine yards. Women may have found power, but they stand alone. They stand without the joy of their daughters, the strength of their sons, the love and protection of their husbands, and most importantly without salvation from their God. The queen, my friend, has been compromised and the consequences are dire.

Unless…this is one of my favorite words in all of the English language, unless we return to the teachings of scripture and the idea of a wife of character being the personification of nobility. Unless we throw ourselves on the mercy of the Savior and He renews our minds to understand His paths. Unless we teach our daughters to war with their natures and embrace the nobility of being feminine and designed by God to be woman, the queen will continue to be compromised. There is great and precious value in being the wife of a good man and in fulfilling that role throughout our days. I know that sounds archaic to our modern ears that barely rise above the drowning tide of feminist’ witches brew that has been steeping for decades in our culture, but personally I think it about time for a modern day fairy tale.

Over the next several weeks I will endeavor to crawl verse by verse through the well known passage in Proverbs 31. I will attempt to glean from the scriptures what it means to take on this noble role. If you would like to take this journey with me stick around as we wind through this section of scripture. It is a passage ripe with sacrifice, joy, love and a heroine that helps secure her husband’s place and family’s security, sounds like an epic adventure to me. A virtuous woman, amid the ashes of our burning sinful natures…can you find her?