Read
The invitations of our Prince come to us in all sorts of ways. Your heart itself, as a woman, is an invitation. An invitation delivered in the most intimate and personalized way.
Your Lover has written something on your heart. It is a call to find a life of Romance and to protect that love affair as your most precious treasure. A call to cultivate the beauty you hold inside, and to unveil your beauty on behalf of others. And it is a call to adventure, to become the ezer the world desperately needs you to be.
To try and give honor to women in the sweep of history is impossible here. It would be easier to think of any of the great or small turning points in God’s rescue of mankind and try to find one where women were not irreplaceable. From the beginning, Eve was God’s gift to the world—his ezer kenegdo for us. History is still unfolding, and your existence on this earth as a woman is proof that you have an irreplaceable role to play. You are a woman, are you not? An ezer kenegdo to your core. Your lingering disbelief (may it be fading away) that anything important hangs on your life is only evidence of the long assault on your heart by the one who knows who you could be and fears you.
There is much life saving that needs to be done yet, and someone needs to do it. Not in a pressure-filled, You’d better get to it kind of a way. Rather, an invitation. Your feminine heart is an invitation by your Creator. To what? To play an irreplaceable role in his Story. Isn’t that what your Lover wrote there? Some dream, some desire, something so core to who you are it almost hurts to think of it. The very longing is such a part of your being it’s scary even to give it a voice. You may not know the dream itself yet. But you know the longing to play an irreplaceable part. That is a good beginning.
Ezer is woven into the fabric of your feminine heart. You must live this out. What lives, what destinies are hanging on your yes to God?
The invitations of Jesus come to us in many ways. Sometimes they come through a circumstance, an opportunity that opens before us. Sometimes they come through other people who see something in us that we may not yet see, and they invite us to step forth in some way. But God’s invitations ultimately are matters of the heart. They come through our passions, those desires set deep within us. What is it you yearn to see happen—how do you long for the world to be a better place? What makes you so angry you nearly see red? What brings you to tears?
You will find that as God restores your heart and sets you free, you will recover long-lost passions, long-forsaken dreams. You’ll find yourself drawn to some vision for making the world a better place. Those emerging desires are invitations—not to rush out and attempt them immediately. That also is naive. They are invitations to bring your heart to your Lover and ask him to clarify, to deepen, to speak to you about how and when and with whom. We love Frederick Buechner’s description when he writes, “The place that God calls us is that place where the world’s deep hunger and our deep desire meet.”
Jesus is extending his hand to you. He is inviting you to dance with him. He asks, “May I have this dance . . . every day of your life?” His gaze is fixed on you. He is captivated by your beauty. He is smiling. He cares nothing of the opinion of others. He is standing. He will lead. He waits for your response.
My lover spoke and said to me,
“Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, and come with me.” (Song 2:10)
Reflect
- How did this reading expand your understanding of what it means to be irreplaceable?
- If you could pursue any adventure, what would it be…and why?
- How long have you had this dream? Who else would be involved in this heroic adventure?
Scripture
Genesis 1:28
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
