Our "Wright"-ing Pad: A 31 Day Grand Prix {day 29} ~ Multitude Monday - 1000 Gifts ~ "undering" with a grateful heart

29 October 2012

A 31 Day Grand Prix {day 29} ~ Multitude Monday - 1000 Gifts ~ "undering" with a grateful heart

"Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear." I Peter 3.3-6

If I told you I was thankful for those words, "...like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master," I'd be lying. The proud, independent, self-sufficient, stubborn, competent, often power-hungry and driven woman inside resents these words. A lot.

The original Greek includes the idea of God arranging it so that a wife is under her husband. The other Biblical expression of "under" that immediately springs to mind is that the Lord waiting at the right hand of God, for His enemies to be made a footstool under his feet... or Heaven as His throne and the earth as His footstool. Who wants to be a footstool?

Jesus chose to...

He chose to abase Himself completely. He subjected Himself to the will of His Father for my good. Can I likewise subject myself to the will of my husband out of love and obedience to God, as an expression of thankfulness for all He's done for me, and because I've put my hope in God and can trust Him to care for me in and through this man He's provided for me?

God arranged it like that for Jesus... and He's arranged it like that for wives... and we know that all things work together for good... whether we think we like it or not, right?

The word obeyed in the Greek literally means "under hearing."

The word master means "exercising absolute ownership rights over."

There's a lot of "undering" in this verse.

God, however, didn't describe wives as footstools to their husbands. That was just the image that jumped to my mind. The image He tells us to fix in our minds as far as what this looks like in the husband-wife relationship is Sarah and Abraham. Stop and think about it:

"Something tells me she just wasn't a pushover. She lived some hard and scary stuff! Any woman who

could live the nomadic lifestyle as she followed her husband (Do you ever wonder what she thought when he told her they were moving, but didn't know the final destination?),
by God's grace - survived her stay in part of a king's harem and still spoke to the husband who allowed THAT to happen,
watched her man give their nephew the best land and then head off to battle to rescue him from his foolish choices,
(se) husband valued her counsel, even though it was sometimes wrong,
willingly entered into the adventure of parenthood at a rather advance age,
apparently had a temper when crossed, and
watched her young man leave with his daddy - sensing that something significant and hard was about to happen...

She doesn't seem to be a woman to mess with." (slightly edited from this post)

That isn't a list I'd normally associate with "undering." But God did. She was all of this and still... God described her beauty as unfading, a gentle and quiet spirit, and something He valued immensely.

I wonder what my marriage, life in my family, and life serving God here in Niger might just be like if I decided to practice "undering with a grateful heart" ...all of the time... if I put my hope in God and made that choice? Don't you?

this week's gratitude list:

(#'s 3224 - 3241)

long weekend

electricity again... finally

major project accomplished

little girls with really cute haircuts

little girls with lots of attitude

lots of lemons

new writing opportunity

vitamin c for colds

finally finding out that those power points did suffice

November's right around the corner