If you could sum the Proverbs 31 lady up in one word what would it be?
My daughter drew a series of illustrations to sum her up. There was one of her sewing with a sewing machine - a bit anachronistic but I got the idea and one of her selling the clothes she made. There were pictures of her cooking, giving instructions, and one with her own child.
Her illustrations matched the one word in my mind. Competent.
That lady could do stuff! In fact, if we start considering the women of God one by one we’ll come up with lots of competent ladies. Wise ladies (Deborah), warrior ladies (Jael), hostesses (Junia, Lydia and the mother of John Mark) poets (Hannah), dancers (Miriam), hard workers (Ruth), brave women (the auntie), and women who were steeped in the word (Huldah, Anna, Priscilla).
Competence is greatly undervalued in women. Our culture values brashness, beauty, silliness, and ambition. Our churches value social skill, and the roles of a wife and mother. But when is the last time you heard someone say, “Mrs. Michelson! That lady can speak three languages and she is always down at the ESL center helping out! How godly.” Or “Don’t you love how Mrs. Jones and her daughters spend a week each summer working with Habitats for Humanity?”
We love to encourage our girls. We bandy about words like self-esteem and growth mindset thinking if we apply enough praise of the right type at the right moment, we’ll have strong and godly girls. But let me suggest a different path.
Let’s teach our girls to do stuff. And then to use their skills to honor the Lord. Let’s teach them to clean and cook and sew and craft. Let’s teach them to garden, camp, blog and refinish upholstery. Let’s let them go to language camp, teach them sign language, and learn a martial art.
And above all else let’s teach our girl's Bible.
When I started at Harding University they were starting a new major: “Vocational Ministry.” It was a second major and had to be paired with a non-Bible major. The purpose was to provide Bible major level study to future deacons, elders, and vocational ministers. But also to future Sunday School teachers, mothers and wives. I jumped at the chance. And although I didn’t have all the same classes, I got much the same education as my Bible major husband.
The things I learned to this day effect my study, my writing, my ministry, my life. That BIble education was priceless. I promise my teacher’s time wasn’t wasted because I am not a preacher.
Our girls need to learn Bible. We must not for a moment imagine that their purview is simply the verses on “women’s role.” Or the Proverbs 31 lady we mentioned before. Our girls need to memorize the books of the Bible, recite verses, memorize outlines, and learn what exegesis means. They need wise mentors who can disciple them into strong, practical, competent followers of Jesus. And they need to start now. 4 is not too young and 12 is not too late. (Subscribe here and get a semester of free theology curriculum for tweens!)
When we look backwards to see how we want our girls to be, we are often painfully short sighted. We look back to some idyllic and imaginary time when women all stayed home, rocked babies and waited quietly for their men to come home. Not only is that image all wrong (those women were more than competent in their own sphere) but it simply doesn’t look back far enough. The women of the Bible were neither fainting violets, simpering idiots, nor brainless chatter boxes. They were judges, evangelists, business women, hard workers, women of powerful wisdom.
May each one of us be about the business of teaching our girls to be the same.
That is how God made our church. He made it organic: an organism capable of a-sexual reproduction. We can, should, must spawn new churches. 
My daughter drew a series of illustrations to sum her up. There was one of her sewing with a sewing machine - a bit anachronistic but I got the idea and one of her selling the clothes she made. There were pictures of her cooking, giving instructions, and one with her own child. 
Privilege might seem like a obsessively modern term. We discuss it in terms of social leverage, financial, educational, gender and racial divides. But the divide is more ancient than modern. Take the story of the cross: Jospeh of Arimathea and the woman who followed Jesus. 
Mary was amazing. We remember her heavy with child traveling to Bethlehem; we imagine her cradling her infant son in a stable, and we see her fleeing slaughter with her husband to Egypt. But sometimes we forget she wasn’t just a mom, she was a poet.
Then the kingdom of heaven will be comparable to ten virgins, who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were prudent. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the prudent took oil in flasks along with their lamps. Now while the bridegroom was delaying, they all got drowsy and began to sleep. But at midnight there was a shout, "Behold, the bridegroom ! Come out to meet him." Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the prudent, "Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out." But the prudent answered, "No, there will not be enough for us and you too; go instead to the dealers and buy some for yourselves." And while they were going away to make the purchase, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast; and the door was shut. Later the other virgins also came, saying, "Lord, lord, open up for us." But he answered, "Truly I say to you, I do not know you." Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour. (Matthew 25:1-13)
In my mind's eye I can see her. Her dark hair would have been ruffled; her clothes rumpled or missing, her face the color of sunset or perhaps as white as snow. I can imagine why she found herself in bed with that man-she needed the attention and physical comfort, she fancied herself in love, or perhaps she was striking out in anger against a husband she had grown to hate. 
_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
