Women are powerful beings. With a glance, we can raise a man’s hopes or wither his self-esteem (often leaving me to wonder why burka-enforcing men think it safe to leave a window for the laser-beam of a woman’s eyes.)
As women have risen to inhabit an equal place in culture (which is a good thing), there has been an evil lie that has risen alongside (which is a bad thing).
This lie perpetuates the deceit that women are inherently, by virtue of being female, nobler, kinder, wiser, and more likely to safeguard others than the men who came before them or who serve beside them.
We have short memories.
We forget that God demonstrated original equality back at the dawn of time when both male and female had the power to make selfish, evil choices that impacted generations to come. Throughout time, women who rise to power have proven themselves to be capable of great good or evil – just like men.
We live now in a culture of threat and death, where it feels dangerous simply to speak the truth. But just as the men who came before us
had to be bold to speak truth to male power, so we women must find the courage to do the same to powerful women who would steer the ship of our culture’s soul off course into the shallows.We must be wise and brave enough to say that effective ideas, noble motivations, and forces of change that serve our greater angels do not originate in the uterus, but from the hearts and minds of people of integrity and proven character determined to serve others, not their own agendas.
Women are a force. Beautiful women, those of lasting, enduring, empowering beauty that rises up from faithful, truth-filled souls, use this force to create life – childbirth being only one avenue for this birthing.
It also emerges through our art, our work, our words, our ways, our home-building, business-building, fund-raising, consciousness raising,
our organizing and administrating,
our generosity, our curiosity, our peacemaking and our cake baking, our wound-binding and our child-minding, our passions released and our voices unleashed,
our coming, our going, our telling, our showing, our hips, our lips, our trips, and even our slips can be used to nurture life, for the beautiful woman is a force.And the power fueling her is none other than the laminin of the universe, Jesus Christ, through whom her magnificence is focused like a beam of light, made brilliant and surgical and magical and luminous through the lens of His broken, risen body.
Sadly for us, ugly women (those whose spirits have embraced the godlessness of our times, the culture of selfishness and death, the short-sighted, faithless argument that we are our own gods and to the loudest and most cunning go the power and the glory) are forces as well.
Destructive, soul-sucking, heart-crushing, mistresses of death and deception who supplant our dreams with starless wormholes leading to relentless caverns of insatiable want and ravenous, greedy demanding dens of darkness and endless gloom.
Here’s the tricky part: ugly women appropriate superficial beauty as an effective disguise, while beautiful women may be hidden beneath a surface with small initial appeal,
so one has to search diligently, and the lazy heart is likely to be ensnared by a Medusa before realizing the mistake.
Like King Herod.
Enraptured by the beautiful mask artfully worn by his brother’s ugly wife, he allowed his smaller self to follow her (or lead her) into adultery, and when she lured him even deeper into her toxic darkness with her undulating daughter’s unveiled treasures, like a fly he found himself adhered to her web, forced to behead God’s man or eat his own pridebut John’s skull stuck in his throat. And I daresay when Herod faces judgment he won’t be recalling Salome’s dance with any sense of allure.
False beauty is like that. It leaves an after-taste like cigarettes and stale-beer, a morning-after sense of disgust and shame, sure to receive a million hits in your mental YouTube, and there’s no escaping an ugly woman’s emotional residue without washing in the Living Water of Christ.
This ancient story illustrates the truth we scarcely admit that people’s private beliefs and personal desires always affect their politics and impact culture through them – no matter how effectively they’ve been veiled.
A beautiful woman is a fount of living water, it springs forth from within her because she’s embraced her Source, and she refreshes all she touches with her bold and generous heart.
When her life dances, she is not unveiled. Her beauty is guarded behind the gates of wisdom, grace, generosity, love, and restraint. It is revealed only to those persistent enough, brave enough, patient enough, faithful enough, godly enough, and and loving enough, to be found worthy of witnessing her brilliance and light.
Once we witness her in action, we lose our appetite for ugly women.
A beautiful woman is a life-force like a super nova. Be that woman. Seek that woman.
Leave the ugly women to perform or parade or politic for the insatiable, lie-loving masses deluded by the prince of the air playing deceitful tunes on his pipe and blowing smoke into the mirrors of the age. Soon enough, the freak show that it is will be revealed, and there will be weeping, wailing, sorrow and many hands grasping for an illusion that isn’t there.
But not us.
For we will come to Christ and we will inhabit the beauty He created us to exude.
And we will come to Christ, and we will seek out women who have established their beauty within the very Source of all life.And on that day, we will embrace one another – as husbands and wives, or brothers and sisters, or fathers and mothers, or sons and daughters, or friends of God, or coworkers in the kingdom or fellow warriors or worshipers,
and together we will engage in the most powerful of all adventures -that of following Jesus in His kingdom of life and piercing the darkness with His Light.
Speaking Truth to Powerful Women https://t.co/GifBgUV7Bp #womanpower #faith #theartofhardconversations
— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) March 8, 2019
Get in on the conversation
Blog Archives
Colorful Connections first place Selah Award 2023!
Newest Release! Grab a Copy Now!
Certified Coach and Freelance Writer
Winner of BRMCWC Director’s Choice Award and AWSA’s Golden Scroll Award
The Art of Hard Conversations – Finalist! Winner of Golden Scroll 2019
Winner of BRMCWC Director’s Choice Award and Finalist for Serious Writers Award Book of the Decade
Finalist for Selah Award for Christmas Novella
Top 100 Christian Blogs 2015
The Conversation
The power of your words never ceases to amaze me, Lori. Always grounded in truth and timeless. I appreciate your gift and your obedience to God’s calling on your life.
Great subject and perspective Lori!!!
This is an idea that’s been in my head, too, but I was struggling to find the words. Thank you for articulating it so well. Similar to revolutionaries who overthrow the oppressive dictator only to result in another dictator. It is the sin in us, not our gender, race, nationality, etc. This is my first thank you, but I have enjoyed & benefitted from so many of your posts.
What a great day to read this post … the opening of Marvel-inspired Captain Marvel. It’s a marvelous film and would dovetail nicely with a discussion of your topic.
Thank you, Lori, for reminding all us women who are not the picture of beauty on the outside that our beauty and power lie in Jesus Christ. We become even more beautiful as we allow Him to transform us from the inside out.
Powerful.
Thank you Lori. Yes, true beauty results from the Light of Christ in women and men both ministering to and lighting up others hearts. It’s Christ ministering to our hearts that we perceive as beauty.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, behold the one who created us in His image Amen!
May we always shine for Him allowing others to see His light shining through us for His glory.
Lori this was so so powerful, bless you!