Walking in Spiritual Wisdom

For most of my life, I read Proverbs 31 as an individual challenge. I felt, and was taught, that it was a yardstick for measuring my success as a Christian woman. My perspective fed into a destructive perfectionism that alienated me from God.

In recent years, I’ve come to embrace this passage in a different way, approaching it as a collective challenge rather than an individual one. I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized that I did not need to rise early and stay up late, buy fields and manage the household, all while rocking toned arms, in order to be a good Christian. We each have our calling and our place within the body of Christ, and God calls us to be a collective success. I can celebrate that my neighbor is more tuned in to the details of what’s happening in the neighborhood and that my colleague has a different specialty than I do. My friends can teach Sunday school, cook church dinners, plan events, and prepare sermons, while I write books and volunteer with the refugee ministry. When we come together in community, we transcend what any of us could do individually and move together as a whole body in a rhythmic flow that serves God’s purposes. An emphasis on individual achievement tends to feed perfectionistic thinking and encourages comparisons. A collective focus joins us more intimately with the purpose of loving God and one another well.

As you reflect on Proverbs 31, consider what your one part in the collective calling could be and how you could take one step today to live that out. Release yourself from the unrealistic expectation of being every part of this calling at once. Instead of using it as a perfectionistic yardstick for your worth as a Christian, let it be an invitation to find your place in a community of believers, bigger and more effective than what you can do alone.