No one feels a woman’s worth more than a baby. I’ve seen that firsthand in my son.
He loves me, but he doesn’t need me, at least not yet. But my wife is indispensable to him. He depended on her most obviously during his time in her womb, but he is still close enough to that time to even now need her body. For comfort, for safety, for nourishment, no other body will do.
This brute fact reveals an important distinction of woman, and it also expresses a challenge. For my son, not just any woman will do. It has to be his mother. To praise women is a similar challenge. All women share the dignity and capacity for motherhood. But each woman is as unique as one’s own mother: individually valued, and showcasing different models of femininity.
This uniqueness isn’t insurmountable. The lover, the other great knower of a woman’s worth, sees in his love something so valuable as to spill over into all of womankind. And yet it is a challenge, which is why so much feminine praise takes the form of poetry.
I am not a poet, but I have been both a baby and a lover. Indeed, because of this I’ve been given some insight into the esteem owed “Woman.” But my insight pales next to that of Christ, who is at once perfect baby and perfect lover and perfect poet. Through his Mother and his Church—both icons of all Woman can be—we learn true praise for the fairer sex.
We all come to appreciate women first through their bodies—first for their safety and nourishment, and eventually for their beauty. And Scripture has ample praise for a woman’s form. Only the woman’s body can bear life. This remarkable body, though often objectified, is foundational.
The first words spoken to woman were a cry of joy at her form: “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!” (Gen. 2:23). Wisdom, most beautiful and desirable, is personified as Lady Wisdom (Prov. 8). And tradition esteems Mary, wisdom actually personified, as the “fairest among women” (Song of Songs 6:1).
Women are beautiful.
We know that this beauty is easily abused. It can be lusted after or used to manipulate. It is a foundational goodness of the daughters of Eve, but it’s potentially superficial. The true lover has the advantage over the baby in this respect. A baby appreciates a woman only for her body. The lover’s appreciation often begins with the body, but it always ends with the heart.
Composite creatures that we are, this feminine heart flows from the particular gifts of a woman’s unique and life-bearing body. But it’s the heart that crowns her, and it’s the heart that lets all women claim this praise as their own—with or without physical childbearing.
“Man looks at outward appearance; but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). Scripture beckons us beyond physical form. When I first met my wife, I was captivated by her outer beauty. But I was brought to the altar by her inner beauty. She has a heart for others in all their needs, emotional and physical. She goes out of her way to smile at everyone we encounter. When our child is hungry, she “rises while it is still night, and distributes food to her household” (Prov. 31:15). More examples are not needed. The tasks of a mother—whether literal or spiritual—are uncountable.
Imagine Mary in the humble home of Nazareth—how she must have labored in their poverty to keep Jesus clothed and fed. And when did her service stop? While Jesus was ministering to the whole world, it is women—and Mary chief among them—who alone are ministering to Jesus (Mark 15:41).
A woman has a heart for others.
Yet Christian women are called to something surpassing even the value of a servant heart. Remember Martha, “burdened with much serving,” and Jesus’ tender rebuke: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious about many things. There is need for only one thing” (Luke 10:38-42). Indeed, a woman’s greatest worth is her example of courageous love. My wife labored in twenty-one hours of agony to bring our son into this world. She faces myriad trials of sleep deprivation, defiant cries, and for all her trouble, the pangs of watching him grow up and ultimately leave her. I’m consistently amazed by how she suffers so well, with cheerful stubbornness. A mother’s love takes incredible courage. Her love doesn’t consist in suffering. But it inevitably is tested by evil, and a woman is evil’s fiercest opponent (Gen. 3:15).
This quality is purely revealed in the New Testament. It inaugurates it, as Mary’s bold fiat starts the Final Age of this world (Luke 1:38). Immediately after this fiat, Mary would rush off on a perilous journey to her cousin, Elizabeth. She would next face ridicule and the threat of abandonment and execution for her pregnancy. She would trudge on to a remote village, deliver a baby in a dirty cave, and face execution again at the hands of her government. Forced on another difficult journey, she would be in exile for two years in an unfamiliar land. At last, she returns—only to immediately move again and live in poverty (Matt. 1-2, Luke 1-2).
The devil quickly gives her ample reason to abandon her fiat. But she presses on. And without hesitation—she “treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).
Mary goes on loving, crushing the serpent beneath her delicate heel. And if not proof enough, Scripture bears her heart to us in words that pierce stone: “Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother” (John 19:25).
A woman lives courageous love.
Indeed, far beyond jewels is the worth of a good woman (Prov. 31:10), for she is more beautiful than jewels. And she has a tender heart where wealth is cold. And when riches fail, only she will still be by your side.
We were all once babies, relying on our mothers. As we age, we’re blessed to profit from I hope many more good women. And at the last, we’ll once again rely on our common Mother, where all of us—man and woman—will rejoice in fullest praise.
Her children rise up and call her blessed;
her husband, too, praises her:
“Many are the women of proven worth,
but you have excelled them all.”
Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting;
the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Acclaim her for the work of her hands,
and let her deeds praise her at the city gates (Prov 31:28-31).