Daily Manna

Key Verse

“Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised” (Proverbs 31:30).

TEXT — Proverbs 31:10-31

Message

An African adage seeks to explain that a lady who could not attract a suitor after trying long must not blame bad luck but examine herself. It might not be due to her lack of physical attractiveness but because she is without good character, which she is deemed to have thrown away.

Good character makes a model woman, not physical beauty, wealth, educational attainment, or other attributes. Our passage is popularly cited as depicting the virtuous woman, a model wife or woman who is industrious, humble, generous, caring, modest, tolerant, God-fearing, and committed to building a family. However, what is easily overlooked is that the woman was first a virtuous spinster and did not wait to acquire the attributes only after marriage. Moreover, these virtues are not hereditary. Virtuous parents could have raised her, and she deliberately chose to fear God and develop a godly character.

Every human being needs to choose what to be in life. The choice is between life (repenting of sins and accepting Christ’s offer of salvation) and death (continuing in sin and rejecting Christ’s offer of redemption leading to eternal perdition). Any woman could be a virtuous woman or wife, and by extension, any individual, irrespective of gender, marital or social status, age, and location, can be virtuous by choice.

Jesus Christ died to make a virtuous person out of every penitent sinner. Christian virtues cannot be obtained or retained outside the saving and sustaining grace of Jesus Christ. The Saviour calls us to glory, virtue, and righteousness so we can be like Him and spend eternity with Him.

Thought for the day

The real beauty is never captured with a selfie.

• Bible
• in one year
• ACTS 7 – 8 (Read By Alexander Scourby)