“We sometimes hear the expression ‘the accident of sex,’ as though one’s being a man or a woman were a triviality. It is very far from being a triviality. It is our nature. It is the modality under which we live all our lives; it is what you and I are called to be – called by God, this God who is in charge.” Elisabeth Elliot deeply explores the subjects of calling and obedience in her book, Let Me Be a Woman.
Being alive and finding myself a woman indicates to me that God has a purpose for me in being female. It is not given to me to change which gender I am, or to ignore my gender and act however I feel.
A couple chapters later, she writes: “All creatures, with two exceptions that we know of, have willingly taken the places appointed to them… What sort of world might it have been if Eve had refused the Serpent’s offer and had said to him instead, ‘Let me not be like God. Let me be what I was made to be – let me be a woman’?”
The rest of the book explores what it means to be a woman, why God created females, and how we are to relate to the rest of the world, and particularly as wives to husbands. Reading it recently was refreshing and encouraging as I struggle to learn submission.
To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn
Lisa of Longbourn 