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A Fitting Name
“Marvelous!” Honorah breathes, as she gently cradles her little newborn baby girl in her arms.
“That’s what we’ll call her, Marvelous!”
Rennet furrows his brow.
“Really? Marvelous?” he says, placing his much bigger hand over Honorah’s, as she holds the tiny baby against her rising chest. “Are you still sure you want to call her that?”
Honorah pulls her eyes away from the precious, sweet-smelling bundle she coddles and, smiling at Rennet, says,
“Well, can you imagine calling her anything else?
Jane? Jean? Joan?
Their too plain. My baby is lots of things but no one will ever call her plain.”
“I agree,” Rennet says. “The names Jane, Jean and Joan don’t thrill me either, but there’s lots of pretty girls’ names. How about Belle, Eden, Seraphina or even Willow? Marvelous might sound great right now, but we must think about when she’s older.”
Returning her eyes to the blanket-wrapped little human, softly sleeping, on her shoulder, Honorah shakes her head.
“No, my mind’s made up. We must call her Marvellous.”
God Made Her
Who made babies so beautiful? Psalm 139:13-16 states that God did, saying,
For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth, Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When, as yet there were none of them.
So, would we ever blame a baby for how it looks? Would we ever say,
“What? You have brown eyes? You should have blue?”
Or would we ever say,
“What? You have dimples? You shouldn’t have any?”
No. That’s ridiculous! Blaming a baby for how it looks when it had no say in the matter one way or the other? That’s silly! But this is often how we treat women, shaming them for looking beautiful, even when they follow the modesty-clothing rules they have been given, when, they have had no say in the matter whatsoever regarding how God made their bodies.
Marcela, a character in the novel Don Quixote, a woman of great physical beauty, who is adored by many men, merely because of her great physical beauty, states this same thing, saying:
“…consider this: I didn’t choose to be beautiful – Heaven made me that way without asking or choosing to be. So, just as a snake doesn’t deserve to be blamed for the venom given it by nature – even though it uses its venom to kill – I don’t deserve to be blamed for being beautiful.”
Then, later she says,
“Beauty in a virtuous woman is like a distant flame or a sharp sword – the one won’t burn and the other won’t cut anyone who doesn’t draw near.”
Meaning, that if a woman has sterling morals, there is no need to fear her beauty. She won’t use her looks to make you fall. So, you don’t have to stand so far away from her or give her long lists of strict and impossible-to-find modesty clothing rules, which make her look ridiculous and very different to the other women standing around her, to keep temptation far away from you.
A Temptation Or A Blessing?
Because it’s like what Genesis 2:9 says about trees, stating,
And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food…
This verse is saying that God not only made trees functional, with food growing on them for us to eat, but God also made trees visually pleasing to make our world beautiful, and there’s two things you can do with that. You can become an Animist and bow down before trees, idolising them, and saying,
“Gracious me! Trees are so beautiful! I must worship them!”
Or you can appreciate their beauty, and how wonderful they make our world look, but mainly focus on collecting their nuts and fruit for your nourishment.
Once again, you can view trees as a temptation and chop down every tree you see, removing the temptation to idolise them or you can view trees as blessings and say to yourself,
“Trees are simply trees. They’re not worthy of my worship! I’ll worship God instead.”
And in the same way, you can view beautiful men and women as temptations or as blessings. You can idolise beautiful women by lusting after them, saying,
“Gracious me! Women are so beautiful!”
You can even attempt to remove all opportunities to lust after women by chopping down every beautiful woman you see, making her feel awful about herself, even though she’s wearing clothes that fit the modesty rules you have given her, or you can view beauty in humans the way God does, as a blessing, as it says in Job 42: 15 which says,
In all the land were found no women so beautiful as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers.
The book of Job is about a man who loses everything, going through a deep time of suffering, but by the end of the book, he has his wealth restored to him, by God, and gains new daughters after a great wind causes the house his first sons and daughters were eating in to collapse on top of them. Job 42:15 says these new daughters were beautiful and not only beautiful but none in all the land were found who were as beautiful as them. And who made them so beautiful? God did. And how did Job respond to their beauty? Did he cover them up with excessive clothing? Did he berate them? Did he exclude them, pressuring them to live in women-only areas? No. Job blessed them by giving not only his sons an inheritance but his daughters as well.
From The Mouth Of A Man
Let’s return now to the words spoken by Marcela in the book Don Quixote. What I find most interesting about her speech, is that it’s not her own. These words were written by her creator, Miguel De Cervantes, who was a man. He wrote these words between the years 1605 and 1615, and if I lived back in the 1600s, I think I would have liked knowing Miguel. To me, he sounds like a man who was ahead of his time. He knew that God makes some people beautiful and that those people aren’t responsible for that “crime.” It also seems he believed that if a woman is virtuous, her beauty is nothing to fear, and if a man who lived in the 1600s can see that, surely men and women of this age can start recognising that also?Although I like Miguel’s words and believe his speech about women came close to capturing the truth about beauty, I don’t think they capture the full story. Because I believe we can also say the opposite, that if you are a virtuous man, even if a beautiful woman is not virtuous, beauty in a woman is like a distant flame or a sharp sword – the one won’t burn and the other won’t cut anyone who doesn’t draw near.” Because the Bible says that while Joseph was enslaved in Egypt, a woman “cast longing eyes” at Joseph’s “handsome form and appearance,” saying, “Lie with me,” but Joseph fled. Even more remarkable is that this unvirtuous woman didn’t only attempt to seduce Joseph once, she “spoke to Joseph day by day” but Joseph “did not heed her to lie with her or to be with her.”
What strength! What virtue! Beauty’s flame didn’t burn Joseph. Beauty’s sharp sword didn’t cut him, only that woman’ deceit did, and you can be like that too.
But, what if you are a virtuous man, but sometimes you still fail, like David in the book of Samuel? What did King David do? Did he then give Bathsheba and all the other women in the city he ruled a long list of strict, impossible-to-find clothing they must wear? No. God’s ways are much simpler. Instead, King David confessed his sin to God and repented of it each and every time he sinned, knowing the future Messiah would take care of it, and 1 John 1:9 says that we can do that too because if we confess our sins, God is “faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” every single time. So, why not do that too?
Genesis 39:1-12 NKJV
1 John 1:9 NKJV
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