“Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands.”
In the past, I’ve often read this verse without thinking too much about it. Not until the past year or so have I started thinking about what it actually means to be a wise woman and to build my house.
Obviously, in order for a woman to have a house, she must have a husband… or does she? I’ve always assumed that for a woman to begin her Proverbs 31 act, she must have a husband and a home. I don’t think that now.
Habits are not formed overnight. Equally so, women of wisdom are not formed overnight. To be one of the Proverbs’ wise women, it has to start in the single years when there is no one. The cultivation of diligence, kindness, wisdom, strength, prosperity, etc. must begin from the very beginning and must be carefully tended throughout the growing-up process.
Building a house, I discovered, does not refer to the actual obtaining of husband and home. Building a house is the careful collection and connection of pertinent building blocks of life. Learning to cook and clean, studying how to raise children and how to discipline properly, making sure relationship with God is strong and secure, investigating whether or not God has been used to fill the holes in life because a husband and home never will, and so on.
I was blessed to realized that building my house is something I can do right now while I’m waiting. Every action I take from when I get up in the morning to when I lay down at night is training me for life as a wife and mother; training me to be a woman of wisdom as I build my house. My prayer is that I would take this revelation to heart and build my house, not tear it down.
