The Captivating Woman

Hello Ladies! 
       It has been a while, hasn't it?!  I hope you all have enjoyed your summer months.  We will be up and running again soon and are looking forward to another year of growing in our understanding of true femininity!
       While we are in the interim before we start the new school year, I wanted to share an excerpt I read recently.  It is from the book, Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge (if you have not read this book, I highly encourage you to get your hands on a copy!).  Here it is:

"A woman bears the image of God in a way that only the feminine can speak.  God wanted to reveal something about himself, so he gave us Eve.  First, we discover that God is relational to his core, that he has a heart for romance.  Second, that he longs to share adventures with us – adventures you cannot accomplish without him.  And finally, that God has a beauty to unveil.  A beauty that is captivating and powerfully redemptive.

A woman longs to be sought after with the whole heart of her pursuer.  God longs to be desired.  Just as a woman longs to be desired.  This is not some weakness or insecurity on the part of a woman, that deep yearning to be desired.  God feels the same way.

While Eve has a glory for relationship, that is not all she is essential for.  When God creates Eve, he calls her an “ezer kenegdo”, a “sustainer beside him”.  The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the Old Testament.  And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately.  That longing in the heart of a woman to share life together as a great adventure – that comes straight from the heart of God, who also longs for this.  He does not want to be an option in our lives.  He does not want to be an appendage, a tagalong.  Neither does any woman.  God is essential.  He wants us to need him – desperately.  Eve is essential.  She has an irreplaceable role to play.

Beauty.  Beauty is essential to God.  Beauty is the essence of God.  The reason a woman wants a beauty to unveil, the reason she asks, Do you delight in me? Is simply that God does as well. God is captivating beauty.  As David prays, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek…that I may…gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.”  Can there be any doubt that God wants to be worshipped?  That He wants to be seen, and for us to be captivated by what we see?  The same is true for woman.  She yearns to be known and that takes time and intimacy.  It requires an unveiling.  As she is sought after, she reveals more of her beauty.  As she unveils her beauty, she draws us to know her more deeply.  Every woman has a beauty to unveil because she bears the image of God.

Eve is the crown of creation.  There is something uniquely magnificent and powerful about a woman.  You have immeasurable dignity, and there is a holiness of your feminine heart because it is God who longs for Romance; it is God who longs to be our “ezer”; it is God who reveals beauty as essential to life.  You are the image bearer of this God.  That is why you long for those things too.  There is a radiance hidden in your heart that the world desperately needs."  (- Chapter 2)
      
 Isn't this simply beautiful?  Maybe sit with this one for a while, Ladies, and let the truths written here penetrate your heart.  God is captivating beauty and you bear that image.  Next time you look in the mirror today, remind yourself of that truth.          My prayers are with each of you!   
                                                                                                          
Peace to your beautiful hearts, 

                                                                                                               
         -Sr. Elizabeth, TOR