Proverbs 31

Proverbs 31 is a little like that: it’s a glimpse into the distant past. This chapter is a window on another time, an ancient culture, a society structured very differently from our own. Sometimes we forget that. When you’re looking at an old photo of your great-grandparents, sometimes maybe you quietly assume that if by some magic trick of time travel you could get back to that day when the picture first was snapped, you would fit in pretty well. You imagine you would maybe enjoy talking with those folks, driving that old Ford, and spending a few days in that house during that time. But if you could travel back in time, you might discover you wouldn’t fit very well after all because so much would be different that you’d feel lost. You’d hop in the old Ford and turn the key only to find that nothing happens. After all, what’s a starter button? In conversations with relatives from back then, you might be unsettled to hear the vaguely racist way they refer to various ethnic minorities (and maybe it would not be so vague!). You might be struck by how little they know of the wider world (having maybe never traveled more than 50 miles from home). If you described your life to them–including things like movies, shopping malls, restaurants, and travel abroad–your pious and well-meaning forebears might slap a “worldly” label on you. Exploring Proverbs 31 is like that—it’s a trip back in time. When we forget that and try to make these verses some kind of a contemporary portrait, that is when we may get led astray.

A recent issue of Time magazine had a fascinating piece on Serena Williams. She is arguably the greatest tennis player of all time (male or female), a creator and displayer of fashion, a public figure and outspoken woman. And she has just become a wife and mother. Her description of her struggles to be perfect is moving. Across a picture of her on the front cover are the words, “Nothing about me right now is perfect. But I’m perfectly Serena.” In the article, she says, “I still have to learn the balance of being there for her, and being there for me. I’m working on it. I never understood women before, when they put themselves in second place or third place. And it’s so easy to do.” The stress of juggling family and career has brought out the same insecurities in Serena as other parents feel. “I don’t think I’m doing it right.” One wonders how Serena would react to Proverbs 31 and the comments above about “fearing the Lord” and about reading this description of a noble wife in the light of the Gospel.

If you are from an old-enough generation, you may remember the tv commercial (I'm assuming it was just a USA commercial, but I don't know...) in which a woman sang, "I can bring home the bacon...fry it up in a pan..." The song was related to "I'm a Woman," written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and sung by Peggy Lee. The song begins, "I can wash out forty four pairs of socks and have 'em hangin' out on the line..." The refrain is "'Cause I'm a woman...W-O-M-A-N! I'll say it again." The woman described in Proverbs 31 begins to take on some of that superwoman aura. She seems to do it all. Home, family, business. Everything she touches turns to gold...

Scroll down the page for Mann's reflection.

("At one time or another it is something maybe most of us experienced, probably as young children. Perhaps you were at your great-grandmother's house, rooting around under an old bed or in some musty closet when suddenly you ran across a shoebox. Curious, you slipped off the cardboard lid and peered inside.....")

Scroll down the page for this resource.