One Year

...modeled on Proverbs 31

The Husband of Noble Character

How many people are lucky enough to find a noble husband?

He is far more precious than a diamond wedding ring.

The heart of his wife trusts and grows steadily closer to him,

and she will have no lack of gain.

He is always finding some new way to romance her

all the days of her life.

He studies hard and seeks work,

and he is happy when his hands are busy.

He is like the Google Corporation:

He always manages to find just the thing his wife needs.

He gets up super-early in the morning

and makes his wife coffee, just the way she likes it,

and brings it to her in bed.

He considers the weed-ridden land behind the house;

with his own hands he digs a garden and plants food.

He dresses himself in strength

at the university gym, and makes his chest strong.

He perceives that he has so many great things to offer the world,

so he gives all day long, and finishes his own work late at night.

He puts his hands to the whole days’ dirty dishes,

and his hands on his wife’s sore shoulders.

He opens his hands to the lonely,

and reaches out to those who were made homeless in the floods.

He is not afraid of the snow for his household

(because all his household lives in the desert)

and because he is faithful to provide for them.

He makes his home a place of warmth and familiarity.

He hangs pictures on the walls and offers to clean the shower.

He brings his wife flowers for no reason at all.

His wife is known to their neighbors;

because of her husband she has time and energy to love them.

He does water-treatment research that she doesn’t understand,

and he doesn’t forget to send a kind e-mail to his co-workers.

Strength and kindness are like two shoes he puts on in the morning,

and he laughs at all his wife’s silly jokes.

He opens his mouth with compassion,

but only after he’s sat quietly to listen to everything.

He doesn’t only study or work all the time,

because he is careful to put his family first in his priority list.

His wife rises up and calls him the best blessing—after Jesus—she’s ever had.

She brags about him to all her friends and all over the Internet.

There are a lot of nice guys in the world, I’m sure,

but you are better than all of them put together.

The people who are the life of the party are usually putting up a façade,

and your good looks might fade someday,

but you, because you love the Lord with all you have, should be praised.