"An excellent wife who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels."
-Proverbs 31:10
This verse is amazing in my life, and not amazing in the sense that is used today to describe something cool, but amazing in the sense that it is startlingly impressive- Amazing in the strongest form there is. An excellent wife is a challenge, an exceedingly difficult woman to find. In one verions I have, the word rare is used instead of precious. She is more rare than jewels - and please keep in mind the time of which this was written. They couldn't go to the store and find a diamond ring or a ruby necklace - the people of that time had to search hard and work hard to find them. They were not easily accessible, they were not easy to find. It was a challenge. On top of that, jewels were not things that were just tossed around willy-nilly. They were kept well; cherished; they were precious and treated as such. An excellent wife is rare & precious. She was rare in Old Testament times, how much more rare is she today?
I have to admit, when Tony tells me that I'm an excellent wife I feel like he's being cheated in some way. The definition of excellent is: possessing outstanding quality or superior merit; remarkably good; extremely good; extraordinary; superior. These are things I often do not believe of myself. Extremely good? Psalms 14:3 & 53:3 say "...there is none who does good, not even one". In Mark 10 verse 18 Jesus makes the same claim, though stated differently as a response to a man seeking eternal life, "And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone." I often times feel far from the Proverbs 31 woman, let alone an "excellent wife. I don't alawys have the best attitude, my mind gets distracted with plans of the future - our plans of 'grandeur', I don't keep the house sparkly clean, I forget to plan/make dinner, I can be high maintenance and difficult, I'm not always motivated to serve my husband how I am called to by God. I have this idea of what an "excellent wife" should be, partly guided from Proverbs 31, partly guided by my ideas of perfectionism. I am no where near what an "excellent wife" should be. But, what a beautiful act of grace to my life! Despite all my imperfections and the fact that I fall short of my version of the excellent wife, my wonderful, amazing, loving Hubster stills sees me that way. He looks at me and sees past my faults, sees through my insecurities and sees a Proverbs 31 woman. In that, I have hope that I can be the woman God has created me to be, I can be the wife He has created to me, and (Lord willing), I'll be able to be the mommy He created me to be. And even more, in that one act of grace from my Hubster, I know God better - God sees past my imperfections, my short comings, my struggles, my sinfulness - He looks at me and sees Christ's righteousness as my own. He sees me the way He created me to be and the way I cannot fully be until the day Christ returns and I am with my Father in Heaven. Oh precious is this grace!
