Day 1 Proverbs 31:10

Day 1

This is a 22 day study blog of Proverbs 31 – The characteristics of a noble wife.  It came at the perfect time in my life and little did I know it, God was also speaking to my sister in another state.  When we shared what God had for us, we thought it would be a way of connecting.  It ended up being so much more than that for both of us.  Each day we prayerfully took one verse of this awesome passage and wrote what God placed in our hearts.  It was transforming for our families and our marriages and we pray that it is a blessing and as transformational for you as it was for us.    There are a few ways to approach this study. You can just read 1 day at a time, you can read 1 day and comment on the blog of your own experience that God is giving you with this verse, or you can journal on your own each verse.  There is no real requirement, only the advice that you prayerfull take in each entry.   You will find each day has 2 entries.  My sister and I wrote each entry independently.  You may find that you can consistently relate to Cat’s entries or more to M.J.’s and that may switch with certain areas of subject.  But, nonetheless, you will find that what ever place you are in, there will be areas that you can relate.  We pray that in each day you find just a tidbit that will speak to your heart and encourage you to be all that God created you to be.
With much love,
Cat and M.J.

M.J.'s DAY ONE 
 ”The wife of noble character, who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.”   Proverbs 31:10  (NIV) 

     That is the first verse in the section that refers to a wife of noble character.
For the next 22 days, my sister and I have embarked on and committed to an adventure of
prayerfully considering each of these 22 verses in Proverbs 31. Both of us with husbands and small children and many items on the schedule, but I am enthusiastically looking forward to my early mornings when I can reflect and write about each verse. It will take to going to bed early, so that I can beat the kids at dawn, while still preparing my lesson plans at night for school. But I cannot remember when I looked forward to something as much.  So I look forward to this 22 day adventure and I am excited for all of you that are in my shoes that venture to do the same! 

I found this wonderful quote that I wanted to share with you today:

                      Conduct is what we do; Character is who we are.
                      Conduct is the outward life; character is the life unseen, hidden within, yet evidenced by that which
                      is seen...
                      Character is the state of the heart; Conduct is it's outward expression.
                      Character is the root of the tree, Conduct, the fruit it bears.
                                                             -E.M. Bounds


     “The wife of noble character, who can find?” It is written in biblical times and implies that even then, a wife of noble character was rare. Now that throws me for a loop, and I’ll tell you why. When I think of a women of biblical times, I picture a woman at the marketplace, buying food for her husband and children. I think of women in their “biblical” clothing down by the river, washing clothes or making food. I don’t have any “mind pictures” beyond that. That’s it. And I think, “How can a woman like that NOT be noble?” Their must have been a ton of noble women back then! I would think that it was uncommon to not be noble. Apparently, that is not true. Read that first sentence again. Do you see it? The second part of that sentence, “who can find?” It doesn’t say “Husbands everywhere have one and if you don’t, well, your just an oddball.” No, it implies that it was hard to find a woman of noble character, even then.
     You would think the first woman that comes to mind when you think of women in the bible that lacked in noble character, would be to talk about Mary Magdelene, but I am not. Mary M. had quite a past and her story is incredible and she was made noble through Christ’s grace, but I am going to go with someone that more people think about when the phrase  “noble woman” is referred to in biblical times. Afterall, Merriam-Webster online defines "noble" as "possesing high or excellent qualities or properties." So I am going to talk about someone you would not suspect when referring to women who may lack in noble character. In fact, I am going to go with two “someones.” Do you remember the story of Mary and Martha? The bible tells us that Jesus was especially close with this family and on one account it tells us of one of His visits. Mary is sitting and the feet of Jesus, just listening and Martha is up and about as Luke 10 tells us “she was distracted with much serving”.  She then proceeds  to put her conduct above character, something we all can find ourselves doing at one time or another. She seems to continue doing her chores, or preparing food, cleaning the house or what ever she is doing, until, apparently, she can’t take it anymore. Then, she seems to just blow up as she begins to complain to Jesus  “Can’t you see my sister has left all this work to me? Can you tell her to get up and help me out here?” (excuse my subtext)  We all know that Jesus says something to her in a loving way that allows her to look at herself. There are many things to glean from this scripture, but I am going to focus on just one. These two had issues. These two women of biblical times had their issues, just like we do today. They had personality differences, different habits, different attitudes, just like we do. They had choices on how to bring up their children, choices on how to be an encourager to thier families ( to our children and our husbands), choices on participating in gossip and slandering, choices on which chore was important and when. They had choices like we do, on how to start their days and have a positive attitude about this life God gave them. They chose, just like we do, whether we will strive to be one of those “rare” women of noble character that is so hard to find. So, in that respect, we are no different. We choose everyday too.  Sometimes we need to be reminded about the differences between conduct and character.  We can be so busy maintaining the household that we forget the reason we are maintaining it.  I forget that my goal is to create a peaceful and joyful home base for this wonderful blessing I am priveliged to have as my family.  To do my part to help them, all of them, including my husband and all who live in my home, get what they need to live the life that Christ created them to be.  To let this home be the sanctuary, the still quiet place that they need to start and end thier day with the purpose our Creator had in mind.  For me, there is no more noble a purpose.
     Just a side note on the second sentence in this verse. (This is funny to me, because I thought the first sentence was going to be the side note and I would write at length on the second sentence.) The sentence states “She is worth far more than rubies.” I have always wondered why it does not say, “is worth far more than diamonds.” Or “is worth far more than gold.” Even though the New American Standard version says “ She is worth far more than jewels.”, most other versions reference rubies. I am no bible scholar, I am just a Jesus girl, but I have awesome teachers that I can go to and ask this kind of stuff. But I am just pondering, why rubies? Without doing ruby research, is there something about rubies that compares to diamonds and gold? Here is my thought for the day. Diamonds and gold both have reflections. With gold, you can often see a reflection of yourself and those around you, it is an outward reflection. With a diamond, cut traditionally, you can see some reflections as well as seeing through the diamond to the other side. But have you ever looked at a ruby, I mean really looked at a ruby. The beauty and depth of a ruby has you looking at the stone itself, not at the reflections (the serving and doing). It pulls you deeper into the warm stone and invites you to appreciate it's character, and not the outward reflection, just the stone and the beauty that lies therein. Not what the stone does, but what the stone is. I am not sure, if that is how the orignal text was intended, but it is my understanding in my prayerful consideration of this verse today. And, given some thought, if I had the choice to have someone refer to me as to having a worth “far more than diamonds” or “far more than rubies”, I guess I would pick rubies every time.   
 M.J.

Lord, help remind me that you give me choices everyday to be the virtuous woman you created in me.  Thank you that everyday is new.  Thank you for the gift of your Holy Spirit and lead me throughout this study to help to mold me to be a woman that is worth “far more than rubies.” 

Extra Mile Questions:
1.  What is one area that I can really focus on today to work on being a "wife of noble character"?
2.  Write down what 3 sentences of what "noble" character means to you. 
3.  We all seem to strive after having the warm inner beauty of a ruby, but we also have the side that we want others to see and notice, the side that sparkles because of it's reflective qualities (our outward serving or projections). Write down 4 characteristics of your "diamond side" (conduct - things you do) and 4 characteristics of your "ruby side"(Character - things you are because of what Christ places inside you) .  Reflect on this list. Then decide which ones do you value more with your time and effort?  Which should you value more? 





 Cat’s Day 1
The impossibility of “Who can find a virtuous wife?” 

“Having or showing high moral standards”-that is the definition of the word virtuous.  Hmm, doesn’t sound like such a hard target to reach does it? Certainly not an impossibility.  Save for some rebellious times in my lifetime, I think I’ve always thought of myself as virtuous.  Striving to be virtuous has always been the plan and I thought I was working it well.  That is until I cracked open my lovely Bible and focused in on Proverbs 31:10-31… and met the Proverbs 31 woman.
She certainly seems to do everything right.  She has all the energy she needs to get all her work done and much much more! After reading the passages about this amazing creature, again, I quickly come to realize that the first verse of this proverb is asking a rhetorical question with implication that it is impossible to find such a wife, and after reading all the verses, I feel that way!  I find a very old favorite book in our cupboard, “Commentary On The Whole Bible” by Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, and turn the yellowing pages to see if I can find any help in translating what I’m reading.  What I found was a comment that refers to the character of the virtuous wife mentioned here being an “inimitable” character.  The dictionary describes inimitable as being “so good or unusual as to be impossible to copy”.  Impossible-that is a big word.  My heart sinks for a moment when I read it.  To become truly virtuous seems unattainable when you think of it as an impossibility.  And yet, the second thing mentioned in the 10th verse of Proverbs 31 is “For her worth is far above rubies”.  After reading my sweet sister’s post about rubies, I did a little research on the formation of rubies.  It appears that rubies are mentioned about 6 times in the Bible and are first mentioned in Job:  “for the price of wisdom (is) above rubies.”  The website answersingenesis.org describes how rubies seem to have been formed by intense pressures and high temperatures within the earth and have actually dated back to the time of the Creation-Flood event.  This would explain why they were not mentioned until the time of Job.  Rubies are so rare that they were always one of the first choices of gems for kings and royalty (the other choice being sapphires).

    If we were to compare the formation of a virtuous woman to a ruby, then we would have to say that she would need to be formed by intense pressures and high temperatures in a cataclysmic act of God to become brilliant and rare as one of these much sought after stones. But this verse isn’t comparing her to a ruby is it?
 It says her worth is “Far ABOVE rubies”!

      Does this mean that becoming the virtuous wife is more  of an impossibility?  Someone would have said that the creation of a ruby would have been a complete impossibility, but it happened.  Amid the catastrophic occurrence that was happening in our world at the time (the great flood), there was something precious being created underneath it all, something we would be allowed to see in the future.  Impossibilities are impossibilities until they happen.
     Does this mean that the creation of a virtuous woman, since she is more rare than rubies, will require more intense pressure than it would take to create a ruby? More heat? I seem to remember the Bible story where Daniel’s three friends   Shadrach, Meshac and Abed-Nego were thrown into the fiery furnace for not worshiping the king’s golden idol in Daniel 3, but were saved by God and on top of that He was with them in that heat!  None of them were burned while they enjoyed the bliss of experiencing this rare moment with their Lord. Some would have said their chance of survival was an impossibility…until it happened.  Until God happened.
There is a marquee in front of a Church on my way to the grocery store that reads, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” ~Matthew 19:26  .  Jesus was speaking from personal experience.  I know that the reference for this verse is focused on the possibility of  salvation only happening with God’s divine grace, but I can’t help apply this verse to so many other areas in my life.  Afterall, rubies were created only with God’s help.  Daniel’s friends were saved only with God’s help.
We may be in the fire today, we may be encountering tremendous pressure deep within us.  We may be struggling with the thought, “am I ever going to become this ‘inimitable character’ this virtuous woman the Bible speaks about?”   Philippians 2:13 says, “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”    I take comfort in the fact of knowing that my Savior is with me in the heat, in the fire and,  in the pressure and knows exactly what I will become, for with God all things are possible!  My birthstone happens to be a ruby.  When my siblings an I were kids, we used to equate our personas with our birthstones just for fun; we’d say, “I’m a diamond, or I’m an opal and I’d say, I’m a ruby!”  But the truth is that I am a gem in the making and I will one day be “far above rubies.”
Blessings,
Cat

Proverbs 31 - a 22 Day Adventure

A 22 day adventure with my sister.  Sharing with our sisters in Christ!
My sister and I who live in different states prayerfully decided to commit to 22 days where we prayerfully reflect on each verse of Proverbs 31.  The section of Proverbs 31 that teaches about the wife of noble character.  It has been life changing for us so far and we still have many more verses to go!  We are blogging and praying that if it will help other women in their Christian walk as well.
Please feel free to comment on these posts or tell your own story about each verse.
Blessings, Cat & M.J.