Five Minute Friday | She

Proverbs says "she is clothed in strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future." I think about this woman everyday. In the midst of what often feels like a lack of safety and balance and inner peace, I envy her security. How can I become like her? I chide myself for often forgetting that the answer is laid out so perfectly. Because the fallen world wants us to become tangled in its spiral, trivializing ourselves with all of the ways it offers to fill our voids. Perhaps the secret is that its really not a secret.

The answer is right there. To be clothed in strength and dignity is to be clothed in the joy of the Lord. To consider each and every moment joy, knowing that everything that happens here is an invitation to become more like Christ. To be clothed in strength and dignity is to welcome the trials, hungering for perseverance and character and hope to be planted deep within our dusty hearts.

To be clothed in strength and dignity is to begin to understand how Father God sees us. When He made us, He was happy. At the foundation of the world, He said that we were good. A wise friend says "never doubt what a king speaks over you." But of course, we are fallen, and it becomes all too easy to identify ourselves by our sin.

There is a beautiful theme throughout scripture of the Lord giving people new identities, and perhaps the greatest part of these new identities is that they are entirely contrary to their old ones. Abram, whose wife was barren, became Abraham. The Lord promised him descendants as numerous as the stars, and it became so. Simon, who denied even knowing Christ in the hour of redemption, was renamed Peter, and Jesus said the church would be built upon him.

So I must choose everyday to respond well to this gospel, to wrap myself in joy. I have been given the glory of a new name, a new calling: to be clothed in strength and dignity, and to laugh without fear of the future, knowing that when Father God looks at me, He sees the righteousness of Christ in me. He sees victory.

Hallelujah, to be clothed in riches such as these.