The Deepening Experience: You Are the Beloved Shembull

Once Upon a Time

There are three questions we found helpful in connecting the smaller stories of our individual lives to the larger story God is telling: who are you, where are you (what is your place in the story God is telling), and what is the good that God is up to in your life? Today, we begin to look at who you are.

You were made by Love and for love. As the Trinity sat together before the beginning of time, their love for one another took on a procreative nature. That’s what love does. It re-creates itself in the Beloved, who then re-creates it in another, and on it goes. You are part of that great love story. There is nothing about your life that is accidental. You may have been a surprise to your parents, but never to God. The Trinity planned for you, longed for you, made a place for you in time, and then waited with joy and anticipation for you to be revealed. That is the true Father and Mother heart of God.

You, dear one, are the apple of His eye and His portion forever. (Deuteronomy 32:9-10, Psalm 17: 8) You are also the representation of God’s nature:

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27, NIV)

Understand this: the revelation of the personhood of God would have been incomplete without woman. There is a part of God’s nature we uniquely bear as women. Did you know among the names of God revealed in scripture, there are names stated in the feminine gender? El Shaddai (e.g., Genesis 17: 1 and Psalm 91:1-2, 14-15) and Ruach Elohim (the name for the Holy Spirit pictured in Genesis 1). In stunning mystery, the name which encompasses every name – Yahweh – is a blend of feminine and masculine word endings. Both Deuteronomy and Isaiah describe God giving birth, while Matthew quotes Jesus using the analogy of a mother hen to describe his own heart for Jerusalem. And Wisdom, heralded in Proverbs, is a “she.”

This is our honor and our glory that God displays beauty, nurture, intimacy, ferocious strength (think of a mama bear), and a drive for relationship through the feminine heart. We are an in-life picture of how the human story culminates: the bride of Christ, living with Him in adventure and intimacy for all eternity.

Throughout scripture, God honors women. He destines the daughter of Eve to bear our Savior. It is a woman who is allowed to pour out her love on Jesus by washing his feet with her hair. It is women who are first trusted with the truth of the resurrection.

Whether or not the world values your feminine heart, God does, and He called it good. As you ponder this with God today, ask Him:

Father, would you speak to my heart, show me my beauty?

Spirit, to what adventure are You calling me?

Jesus, what are You entrusting to my compassionate, nurturing heart? Where do You see me bring forth/create life/nourish life?