This weekend and upcoming week I'll be single-momming it. Parenting was definitely never meant to be a one person job. Tomorrow is baseball all day. I'm looking forward to Sunday! Monday and Tuesday are hurry-up-and-finish-all-your-required-screenings days at my school. Wednesday is a short day. Thursday a very long day. And Friday an out-the-door-for-fall-break-at-1:45 day! Then two glorious weeks of school nursing cessation! Two weeks of taking every opportunity to be with my kids and husband, not just going from one task to another. Two weeks of more time outside in cooler mornings and evenings. Fall is a favorite season for me. You feel fall here, you don't see it.
These scriptures have been in my mind these past few days:
She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.- Proverbs 31:26
This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.- Ephesians 5:32
Proverbs 31 is the famous ideal-woman/wife passage. When you read thru the verses that describe this woman of virtue, there's more describing what she does than what she says. From what I can tell, in God's economy, a woman of excellence is mostly identified by her actions, not her words. Although her words are important. In fact, when she opens her mouth it's noted. Wisdom comes out and a teaching of kindness.
Ephesians 5:22-33 talk about the relationship between a husband and wife. At the end of this section Paul says, "This whole thing about the roles and relationship between a husband and wife is about Christ and the church." He didn't say it was about male vs. female. It's a mystery, a picture of something greater.
So I was thinking. If a wife is a picture of the relationship of the church to Christ, and Proverbs 31 talks about this ideal wife/woman and her many actions and few wise words that reveal her virtue and her reverence for the Lord, maybe the church should be more about action and very selective about words.
Talk is cheap. We say we go to church. We call ourselves Christians. We put fish symbols on our cars and write Christianese on our Facebooks. Nothing wrong with any of that. But is that the large portion of what we're known for? Or is it our actions? It should be. We should be known as a church, a people group, who fear the Lord by actions like the woman in Proverbs 31: carrying for those in our families, reaching out to those in need, working to provide for our needs, and speaking wisdom and teaching kindness.
Christ said people would know we were His by our love for one another. Not by our cheap talk. By our actions.
I've been thinking about this because of Rahab. Not exactly the model of godliness, but she is a noted model of actions that speak much more than mere words.
And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.- James 2:25-26
Quieted,
Sheila
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