Women are strong these days, aren't they? Women feel empowered, liberated, invincible! Women can do anything, even go to combat in war time. The news is full of stories of strong women who run marathons, write books, patent inventions, raise families, travel the world, win sporting events......
Strong women is nothing new. Women of unthinkable strength and bravery is nothing new. I think of Jochebed, Deborah, Ruth and Esther of the Bible. Strong doesn't begin to describe them. They were women unafraid, or at least able to conquer their fears. Jochebed, the Israelite slave, defied the law of the day to save her son's life. He was saved and delivered an entire nation out of bondage. Deborah, the prophetess and judge, accompanied a terrified man into battle, then sang after their victory. Ruth, the housewife, followed her widowed mother in law to a foreign land, accepting the true God and working hard to provide food for herself and her mother in law. She eventually became the great grandmother of King David.
Esther, the Jewish beauty, waited and obeyed and saved the Jewish people from slaughter. Esther fascinates me, with her wisdom, patience, submission, and selflessness. She not only obeyed the man who had reared her, she married a stranger, continued to ask for advice even from her position as queen, conquered her fear of death and risked her life for others. She had the courage to look a wrongdoer in the eye and point him out to the king. She had the courage to live in the palace for several years without revealing her nationality. She had the courage to wait. She had the courage to listen to counsel. She had the courage to count her life as nothing for something greater than herself. She was a strong woman if there ever was one.
Esther was a real woman with skin and bones, a real woman with a heart, with doubts, fears and insecurities, but balanced with her "realness" was the strength of a lion, the determination of a warrior, the faith of a child. There are many, many other examples of such strength in women of the Bible, all real, all praised even thousands of years later.
I wonder if today's "strong" woman has the same strength of character and heart as Esther or Jochebed, or if is more of a need to prove worthiness, a search for meaning. I know balance is an elusive quality and very hard to practice consistently, but I hope to learn how to balance femininity, wisdom and grace with strength - not of body or mind, necessarily, but of character and soul.
(I am looking forward to some serious "girl time" in Heaven with these strong, awesome ladies!)
