“Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.” 1 Peter 3:7
I was determined to prove Peter wrong. Weaker? Even the analogy that a woman is like a delicate vase and a man is like a thermos rubs me the wrong way. I resent the implication that I was made to be admired for my beauty. I want to be filled with coffee and taken on a hike, not left on a shelf for display. I want to be tested in endurance and strength. I want to be remembered as strong rather than beautiful.
Beauty.
What is beauty anyway? I’ve viewed beauty as a cheaply physical description, taking my cues from my experiences with movies, commercials, and the eighth grade. I’ve associated beauty with power. I saw beauty give the illusion of power for a time, but eventually beauty attracts the more powerful and is overtaken by strength. Strength trumps beauty, so God if you were planning on making me beautiful, please make me strong instead. Help me prove Peter wrong when he called me the “weaker vessel”. Amen.
It wasn’t until I spent time in places stripped of beauty that I began to understand beauty and “the weaker vessel” more intimately. Here I’ve seen beauty bought for the equivalent of $1 USD. A commodity. My soul screamed at the ugliness and this exploitation of beauty because it is actually deeply spiritual. Women bear and display the beauty of the image of God. We bring beautiful life to dark places and are made to reflect the glorious beauty of God in a much more than physical way.
And yet all around the world the image of God is being consumed for profit.
Through Matt Chandler, God showed me that describing women as weaker vessels is “not an intellectual statement. It’s not a gifts statement. It’s that where the imago Dei (image of God) has been fractured, women will bear the brunt of evil in the world. It is women who will most often be consumed. It will be women who are most often not valued. It will be small children… They bear the brunt of it.”
So Peter, if you want to warn and remind the world to value women then go right ahead. In fact, why don’t you say it again for emphasis because I don’t think we got it.
Yesterday I held a young woman and just sobbed with her. We were surrounded by the 50 other girls 11-18 years old who she now lived with. They live in a center something between an orphanage and a prison. They can’t leave, some because they are incarcerated, others because they were abandoned there or have come as a refuge from sexual abuse and exploitation. We had come to worship with them and encourage them. And then I was holding her and crying as much as she was. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know a thing about her. God knew it all, and His heart was shredded for her story.
I am beautiful. Praise God for making me beautiful in so much more than appearance so that I can carry His beautiful presence into dark places. And in the end, my beauty, strength or weakness aren’t even about me at all. It’s all for Him, to show how glorious He is to the world.
