More Precious

Being a woman today is hard, especially as a Christian woman. The world tells us so many contradicting things.

“Cover up those spots on your face.”

“You’re wearing too much makeup.”

“Lose that belly fat.”

 “You’re too skinny, eat a burger.”

“Work hard and be a girl boss.”

“Don’t put work above your family.”

“Ugh, do you ever talk about more than just your kids?”

“Be an independent woman!”

“Why are you still single?”

“Be this”

“Be that”

“Be perfect”

The standards that society places on women are so incredibly fickle and constantly changing. Your looks could be trendy one day and cringey the next. The monologue from Barbie was right, being a woman means having all these expectations on you, expectations that you will never actually be able to meet.

And the world knows you’ll never meet them. So often they use these standards to make you feel insecure and to make you buy things to solve those insecurities. They tell you to lose weight, show off some more skin, cover up that blemish, all so you can meet their standards. Don’t get me wrong, wearing nice clothes, wearing makeup, and living a healthy lifestyle are good things in themselves, but if you’re doing them to try and meet this impossible standard, then what’s the point? You should live healthy cause you want to feel healthy, you should wear things that make you feel good, you should wear makeup cause you want to, not because you feel like you must.

At the end of the day, society uses these insecurities to attack your identity, to make you feel not good enough as a woman. No matter what you do, you will never be good enough for the world. Even Beyonce and Taylor Swift get comments from people like these. When you try to find your identity in the world as a woman, all you will get is that you aren’t good enough, no matter how much money you spend and no matter what you do.

To my sister in Christ, if you keep trying to be good enough for the world, just stop. Quit. You’ll never be good enough for the world with their contradicting expectations. Put that energy into striving to be a godly woman. Proverbs 31 is where you can find these expectations. They aren’t contradicting either, because God’s Word never contradicts itself. For this, I want to focus on the first verse of that passage, Proverbs 10:31.

“An excellent wife who can find?

She is far more precious than jewels.”          -Proverbs 10:31 (ESV).

Now I understand not all of you are wives. Heck, I’m as single as a pringle myself. However, this whole passage shows how a godly woman should be, whether she is married or not. In my bible, this passage is title “The Woman Who Fears the Lord.” So, it’s safe to say this passage applies to Christian women, whether you’re married or not.

Let’s go back to verse 10, the one that inspired this painting. This passage is starting off by saying that a woman who fears the Lord is worth far more than jewels, or rubies as it says in other translations. But exactly how much are we talking? Let’s try and put that into perspective. The Hope Diamond is the most expensive jewel in the world costing $350 million.  The Sovereign’s Sceptre, one of the royal jewels, is worth $400 million. That’s not even including the other royal jewels. And yet God sees you as worth far more than that. God sees you as worth more than all the money that the richest man has (which is not Jeff Bezos anymore). As a woman in Christ, you are worth more than all the richest this world has to offer.

I wanted this painting to be a reminder to all my sisters in Christ that no matter how the world sees you, God sees you as His, as the most valuable and precious thing to Him. The light shines on His daughter in this painting, not on the jewels. Those jewels simply reflect the God given beauty of her. Christ values you and loves you so much, He sacrificed himself on the cross for your sins and my sins. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13, ESV). His love calls you valuable, beautiful, and His daughter. His ultimate love shows that through the cross. He paid that ultimate price for your soul, a price that nothing in this world could buy, a price that nothing you could do could pay for.

So, my sister in Christ, stop putting you identity in a constantly changing world with constantly changing standards. Put your identity in the constant God and His Word. Because you are far more precious than anything in this world.