With two kids asleep at the same time, shocking, I know, I’m sitting down to lay out this journey I’ve set for myself.  If I’m really going to own this passage and try to apply it to areas of my life, I need to spend some time really uncovering these attributes of a Woman of Noble Character.  I’ve replaced woman with wife because I think this passage goes beyond marriage and children, though it does address these issues.  This passage in the Bible is one of the longest speaking about the attributes in a woman that please God.  I don’t think there is a comparable one about men laid out in this way, but please, if anyone can think of one, please feel in my mental gap.  So, though these attributes laid out in this passage seem to be from parent to son (I am intrigued by the idea that this passage, Proverbs 31:10-31, could have been told by a mother to her son.  The first bit of Chapter 31 is from a mother to her son, so why not?) I don’t think that this is only about married women and mothers.  This passage is for all women to wrestle with and to fit into their lives.

Let the games begin.  I thought I’d take a couple of days to ruminate on the characteristics or attributes I see in this passage.  I believe it’s the attributes that matter here, and it’s the attributes that we can apply to the circumstances in our own lives.  This gives us the ability to cross beyond the cultural barriers (my husband doesn’t spend a lot of time sitting at the city gate) and figure out what God is saying to us today.  Once I examine these attributes I’m intending to look at other women in the BIble who personify some of these attributes.  If I’m going to look at what being a woman who fears the Lord looks like, I want to see her in all her different shapes and forms and circumstances.  What better place than the Old and New Testaments?

There’s the plan.  Look at the attributes in Proverbs 31:10-31, look at women in the Bible who personify those attributes, and focus on one of those women each week.  I’m intrigued.  I don’t want to just look at your typical Marys and Marthas, though they’ll be in there, but at some of the more obscure women mentioned.  Some of their stories are pretty incredible and I am excited to learn what they have to tell me, a woman attempting to live a life in fear of God.

Tomorrow I’ll look at what it actually means to fear the Lord.  Probably more than just a roller coaster, wet your pants kind of fear.  We’ll see.

Until tomorrow.