When I gave my life to Christ over forty-one years ago, I remember my first impression after reading about the excellent wife described in Proverbs 31.  The following paraphrase is my rendition of how that Scripture sounded to me:

An excellent wife, who can find?  She is worth her weight in gold and her husband adores her.  She prepares his favorite meals everyday and is warm and affectionate at all times.  She never has PMS and he can’t remember the last time she had a headache at bedtime.  She owns her own retail business buying fabrics and imported foods and in her spare time, she sells real-estate.  She is very creative and artistic in her home and makes everything by hand.  In addition, she has the reputation for being the best cook in the church.  She sets her alarm at 4:30 AM and makes her menus and grocery lists for the day.  In order to do all this she has to be in tip-top shape.  Therefore, she disciplines herself to do an hour of aerobics and jog two miles every day.  Most nights she lays awake thinking of new ways she can spend her free time and does most of her sewing after everyone else is in bed.  She has many ministries in the church which include the managing of a feeding program for the homeless and visits people in the hospitals and prisons regularly.  She makes all of her family’s clothing from the imported fabrics she purchases and they are the best dressed in the city.  As a graduate of seminary with a degree in Bible and Theology, she has incredible wisdom and insight, thus making her counseling ministry and adult Sunday school teaching ministry in the church very powerful.  She is loving and kind to all and patient and understanding when wronged or hurt.  She is never guilty of gossiping or losing her temper and when asked how she does all this, she says it must be due to her two hours of daily prayer and devotions.  She is constantly attending to her own family and refuses to put her children in day care.  As a result of her extraordinary devotion, her children and husband love her and revere her.  They praise her every day and show gratitude for everything she does for them.  They often surprise her with gifts and cards expressing their appreciation. Every year she wins the “Mother of the Year Award” and is in demand for magazine and television interviews nationwide.  When she walks down the street, everyone recognizes her and her fame has spread throughout the land.

Over forty years later I have a completely different perspective on what this passage means to me.  Rather than seeing this woman as an impossible model of what I am supposed to be and feeling totally inadequate and discouraged, I see it as a beautiful composite of the image of God in His creation of woman.  Genesis 1:26, 27 and 5:1 describe God’s creation of Man (mankind) as being comprised of both “male and female.”  In the same way that the Persons of the Godhead are different, the differences between men and women are to reflect the distinctions between the Persons of the Trinity.

God had a specific purpose in mind when He designed the woman.  She was to be very different from the man, but essential to the total expression of God’s image in mankind. This beautiful proverb describes the incredibly multifaceted attributes of beauty, strength, courage, gentleness, compassion, wisdom, resourcefulness, ingenuity, creativity and virtue of the feminine characteristics of the image of God in its purest earthy expression. This Proverbs woman isn’t just a woman, she is woman.

Today when I read this proverb I am encouraged to continue pressing on by faith trusting God to fulfill His purpose in my life.  Paul said, “I press toward the mark for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14). And even though my resume will never read like the woman in Proverbs 31, I firmly believe that since God is the One doing a good work in me, I will trust Him to bring it to completion. “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6 ). As I allow Him to do the shaping and molding, and at times even breaking, I am confident that He has a good plan that is ultimately going to make me into the woman He wants me to be.