The lesson opened with a question that ought to be simple: can you tell me what a woman is? Evidently that has become a difficult question to answer, which is strange, because we understand it perfectly well. But it is typical of the world we live in. Our culture is working to remake women into a different image — one the world finds interesting — and that is a dangerous thing to let happen quietly. So it is worth going back to the text and asking what God actually made, and why.
Genesis 2 slows the creation account down and lets us watch. God forms the man out of the dust, breathes into him the breath of life, puts him in the garden to tend it and keep it, and gives him a law to live by. A home, a job, and a boundary. And then, for the first time, God looks at something He has made and calls it not good: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18).
Made From Him, Made to Nurture
Consider what God did about that deficiency. He could have spoken a second person into being, or formed her from the ground the way He formed Adam. He did neither. He caused a deep sleep to fall on the man, took a rib, and built a woman from it — the only creature in all of creation made out of part of another being. When Adam woke and saw her, he understood immediately: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23).
If a man’s nature runs toward labor — he was made to work, and much of his fulfillment comes through it — the nature God placed in woman runs toward nurture. And notice how large that word is. The Hebrew behind “help meet” means an aid, one who comes alongside. It is the same word the psalmist uses of God Himself: “My help cometh from the LORD” (Psalm 121:2). God did not make a smaller assistant to handle chores. He made a being of immense capacity to help, to nurture, and to love.
Anyone loved well by a godly woman knows what that looks like in practice. They work with their hands. They cook and clean and iron and mop, wipe runny noses, bathe little boys who smell like yard dogs, braid little girls’ hair, buy the mud pies and the lemonade, and tell us we did great. They also say suck it up, buttercup, and stop whining. What area of life have they not touched? There would not be a single godly man on this earth if it were not for godly women. Not one.
The Numbers Are Worth Sitting With
Here is a fact the lesson put on the screen. American women today report lower overall happiness than men — a significant reversal from the 1970s, when women reported more satisfaction than men did. Despite gains in education, employment, and political rights, women’s self-reported happiness has declined steadily over the last forty years while men’s has stayed roughly flat. That is a real and much-studied finding among researchers, and it has not been easy for anyone to explain away.
Women today have more freedom to go and do and pursue than any generation before them. And as a whole, they are not happier for it. That is odd — unless the pathway to fulfillment God built into a woman runs somewhere other than where the culture keeps pointing.
Four Things That Will Destroy It
The lesson named four dangers plainly, and none of them announce themselves.
- Pride. The world wants you to take pride in being independent — in needing no one, answering to no one, building a life around yourself.
- Selfishness. The world wants you to spend your time on whatever makes you happy in the moment. But if you invest in yourself rather than your husband and your children, they will see it and feel it, and that is a bitter lesson for a child to learn.
- Greed. More, and more, and more — and every bit of it purchased with hours that were meant for someone else.
- Slothfulness. “The wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands” (Proverbs 14:1). A house is rarely torn down on purpose. It is usually just neglected.
Do not fall into the trap the world is setting. It is not wrong to have interests, or to work outside the home. It is wrong to let those things quietly take the place of what matters most. And the window is short — children who ought to still be three years old are suddenly thirty. There is precious little time.
Where to Put It Instead
Invest in your husband: “Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her” (Proverbs 31:10-11). Titus 2 tells the older women to teach the young women to love their husbands. Love your husband, support your husband, obey your husband. Encourage him, comfort him, tell him he did well. He carries decisions that will make or break a family, and the weight of it is heavier than he will admit. There will be times to say that was a bad choice — and he already knows it. God did not tell you to lead him. He told you to help him.
Paul lays the roles out plainly: “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body” (Ephesians 5:23). Each of us has a role to play, and both roles matter. He writes the same thing to Timothy about young women — that they “marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully” (1 Timothy 5:14). That is the plan of God: to nurture, to love, and to grow a family.
Invest in your children: “My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother” (Proverbs 1:8). Paul remembered the unfeigned faith in Timothy that lived first in his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice (2 Timothy 1:5) — two generations of women handing down a faith that made a preacher. Invest your love, your study, and your example in them, so they can succeed and so they can go to heaven.
And know that the calling carries sorrow with it. When God spoke to Eve after the garden He said He would greatly multiply her sorrow and her conception (Genesis 3:16), and Eve became the first mother to bury a son at his brother’s hand. Wherever there is the deepest capacity to love, there is exposure to the deepest grief. That is the cost, and it is real.
A Call to Respond
The lesson ended with thank you, and it is worth repeating. Thank you for loving God and dedicating your life to Jesus. Thank you for nurturing all of us, when it gets wearying and you give and give anyway. Thank you for loving your husband, for being faithful to him, and for submitting to him. Thank you for loving your children and teaching them the words of life. Thank you for praying for us, teaching us songs, and being a godly example. Thank you for making homes where people can grow and thrive. Thank you for the spankings and the scoldings and the suck-it-up-buttercups — we needed those too. And thank you, above all, for investing in our souls.
If you are struggling — as a woman, as a man, in your life or with your salvation — do not carry it alone another week. There is help here, and there is hope in Christ. Come and let us walk with you.