When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet. — Proverbs 31:21

Snow in Israel? It happens. There are mountains there and all that has to happen for snow to fall is for the temperatures to drop enough and have a weather system pass over. I googled the question and found that it happens every few years. Theoretically, even the area of northern California where I live could see snow if it got cold enough when a storm system came through.

This verse seems to go back to the theme of preparation. The virtuous woman has oil for her lamps, spins thread from flax to make clothes, and her family has scarlet garments for those rare occasions when snow would happen. Purely speculating on my part, having scarlet cloth would require that whatever cloth that was dyed could hold that color (she would have to know about mordents) and she would have to have enough of whatever was used to make the dye. This means lots of crimson worms or madder red which would have been quite expensive. Scarlet garments were used for the High Priest in Israel and anyone with clothing that color would have to be quite well-off.

Another benefit of having her family clothed in scarlet would be that they could be seen in a blowing snowstorm with white out conditions. In a world where clothes were frequently whatever color the wool/flax/linen were, her family would stand out and perhaps be able to be found.

Today, we welcome Christina of Reflections of a Catholic in Formation.

??She reaches out her hands to the poor, and extends her arms to the needy.?? ??Proverbs 31:20

As young women in university, my friends and I have often been exhorted to ??be a Proverbs 31 woman??. For most of us, this seems like an okay proposition, except that nobody tells us what that means. It??s a confusing imperative because there are so many ways to be a ??Proverbs 31 woman?? and many of them don??t even apply to us yet. We don??t have husbands to trust our counsel or children to praise us, we can??t weave clothing or buy fields, so we??re left wondering what we can do to model ourselves after Proverbs 31 other than fearing the Lord. It is a wonderful thing to discover, then, that verse 20 applies to every woman and is relatively easy to emulate.

Proverbs 31:20 says of the ideal woman, ??She reaches out her hands to the poor, and extends her arms to the needy.?? It is simple, straightforward, and perfect for a woman my age. During one??s university years, there is a mixed sense of mature responsibility and juvenile desire to enjoy as much leisure as possible, the latter is made easy by the large amount of free time students enjoy being away from home and, to a certain degree, masters of their own universe. However, if one attends university in a city, he or she is not shielded from seeing that there are many people in the immediate vicinity who are in need, and for young Christian students it is the perfect opportunity to emulate the Proverbs 31 woman.

Unfortunately, universities like mine are fast paced, high expectations kinds of places which leave students little free time to enjoy leisure or dedicate time to much other than work if they want to do well. Service to the poor is often restrained to weekend mornings or giving what little cash or change a student carries to a person who asks for it. The school runs alternative break trips, but they run into the thousands of dollars, which is not always easy money for a student to get.

The cheapest of these alternative breaks is the one sponsored by the Newman Center, and it is usually filled with women in spite of the fact that we are always doing manual labor. The destination is typically in the rural South, and the project is usually helping to rebuild and renovate a house that is either falling apart or was destroyed by a natural disaster from which more affluent areas have long recovered. Students wear old, ratty clothes that only get dirtier as the week wears on, and generally do not look or act in a way which portrays a conventional sense of femininity.

I would argue, though, that doing work like this for others is not only proper in the sense that we should be helping people who need it, but that it is also inherently feminine, as per Proverbs 31:20. For young women to whom time is valuable and reflects how successful we could one day become, taking a week to go to an unfamiliar place to help someone who needs that time more than we do is a perfect expression of what Pope John Paul II referred to as the ??feminine genius??. Our instincts for care and kindness are manifested in ways that are not traditionally feminine, but the expression of them is inherently so. Perhaps, then, it is better that we are not told how to be a ??Proverbs 31 woman??, but that we are allowed to start on the road to becoming one with the opportunities which are presented to us now.

Christina is a junior at The George Washington University studying History and Latin. She is a revert to her Catholic faith, and enjoys reading (and occasionally teaching) as much as she can about it. She is fascinated by nuns and loves decidedly un-girly things like archery and contact sports. Christina blogs about her life and Catholicism at Reflections of a Catholic in Formation.

In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle with her fingers. — Proverbs 31:19

I have a number of friends who are yarn junkies and several who have spun their own yarn from fiber so this is a bit of a fun passage for me. Most of them have their own spinning wheels and ball winders which I imagine makes this easier. For flax, however, the process is different. You tie the flax fiber onto the distaff and wind it onto a drop spindle held in the other hand. Pictures can be found here.

I think in the spirit of the passage, it means that the virtuous woman/woman of valor makes her own fiber which is then used to make clothes but it illustrates an interesting principle. Fiber by itself is fairly weak — you can pull it apart easily. However, once one spins it into thread, it becomes much more difficult to separate. It can be pulled through cloth as sewing thread or woven into the cloth itself (making it even stronger).

Like the fiber, we are weak just by ourselves. However, we become strong when we are all woven together into the thread of community. It is quite easy to break just one person but in the community, all of us hold the others up and we are better able to weather the things life throws at us.

Interesting, huh?

She sees that her trading is profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night. — Proverbs 31:18

I grew up in northern California and that meant that earthquakes were a reality for me. I’ve been through a number of earthquakes that measured 5.0, at least one that was in the 6.0 range, and the worst one — the Loma Prieta earthquake on October 17, 1989 — that measured between 6.9 – 7.1 depending on your source. That one collapsed a portion of the Bay Bridge, collapsed a few highway interchange, devastated neighborhoods in Watsonville, and caused more insane damage. It was a shock to me as to how much damage there was when I watched a Discovery channel special on the earthquake ten years later. It was drilled into us that the only way to deal with this threat was to be ready with a certain amount of water (2 gallons per person per day), non-perishable food, batteries for flashlights, camping equipment in case you had to cook outside, candles, and stuff like that so that if your house collapsed, you could survive.

This fits into our verse for today because our woman of valor has assured that her trading yields profitable results so that “her lap does not go out at night”. The money from her endeavors yields the funds necessary to buy oil to light her lap (and thus her house) and she is prepared for whatever she will handle that night. A reason that this might make her a “virtuous” woman or “woman of valor” is that her husband can trust that she will be prepared if things come up. A child with a fever? She can deal with that. Company coming? She has the extra food and linens.

In our modern lives, I feel like this verse is extolling the virtues of women being prepared as managers of their households. As in the previous paragraph, child with fever? She’s got Tylenol. Power outage? The flashlights have fresh batteries, there’s ice to put in coolers to keep the perishables cold, and we’ll have ice cream for dinner. Zombies attacking? Treadmills are surrounding the house. (Sorry… I couldn’t resist.)

As I’m preparing for Lent (which is, like, my favorite season of the Church year), I’m looking at 40 days of preparing my soul for Holy Week and Easter. I haven’t quite figured out what I’m giving up and/or taking on yet but my mind is on what will cause my soul to focus most on Christ during this time. This verse is useful in my spiritual preparation as it is reminding me that I need to be prepared for my ultimate destiny — eternal life with Jesus.

We have a guest post from Clare today. She works in news and she graciously took this verse today which is sparing you from having to read my sub-par musings.

??She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong.?? – Proverbs 31:17 (ESV)

If I were to ever get a tattoo, it would be of this Bible verse.

Since I first read it (and understood it), it??s kind of stuck with me. Maybe it??s because it draws me to memories of my time playing softball in high school. As a catcher, I had all that lovely gear – face mask, chest protector, shin guards – that were my protection and extra muscle. Thanks to all the hitting and throwing I was Fierce. I was Strong. I was Intense.

It also carried with it the perfectionism knocked into me from my ballet years.

It??s those things that I have carried with me even to today.

I suppose you could say that the fierceness, strength, intensity, and perfectionism fermented inside me to become something more teens and young women need today.

They need confidence in themselves.

I know I am good at what I do. I??m a writer, manager, artistic eye, and editor rolled into one.

Working in TV news, these things are all very important for anyone. However, I chose not to go the reporting route. I went the producing route. I put together the show – what order the stories go in, how long each reporter has, what gets cut if need be.

Being meek and silent didn??t get me where I am today.

I only graduated from university back in August. I started at my station in mid-September. Four months and a day after my first day, I was signing a contract that named me Executive Producer and meant I??m staying where I am until the end of 2014.

If I hadn??t worked hard and had confidence in myself and my abilities, I would not have gotten this. (Plus I??m just an all awesome person… Not really but I like to pretend.)

That self confidence at work spills over into my love life. (Men are hopeless and I had to just flat out ask my then best friend why he was being awkward and if he ??liked?? me and all that jazz.) That self confidence at work spills over into my spiritual life. (I know I can do better. It just takes time and thought and lots of prayer.)

And it is that self confidence that lets me know that eventually I??ll figure out what exactly God wants from me. Even though it would be easier if he just hit me over the head with it!

Clare blogs at Confessions of an Underground Catholic. Her favorite topics to blog about are discernment and the saints. She is a recent college grad who decided to move someplace warm and monsoon-y after graduation. She is thankful she hasn??t seen snow this year, has an awesome job, a friend who tries to keep her in check, and an awesome boyfriend. She is looking forward to riding out her first hurricane and going to a hurricane party since she missed Hurricane Isaac by a week last year.

She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard. — Proverbs 31:16

This will probably be short because I didn’t get to this until 6:00 p.m. today. Sorry!

One of my favorite organizations is Kiva. They loan money to people in impoverished communities to do something to get them out of poverty — start a business, build a house, or something educational. People can make loans in $25 increments and all those $25 loans add up to $1800 or whatever is needed for the loan. When the loan is paid back, you have the option of having them cut you a check or re-loaning out the money. My choice: *ALWAYS* re-loan the money. I’ve made 14 loans, 13 of which have been paid back or are being paid back and that’s with perhaps $100 of seed money. That’s a lot of $25 re-loans.

I think that this practice (micro-lending) is some of what the woman of valor in this chapter would do today. Back in those days, land would be the thing in which to invest. Today, land is expensive so a savvy woman would invest in other people. With the help of Kiva and other similar organizations, people who would otherwise not be able to feed their families are now out of poverty and becoming leaders in their communities. In this way, growth occurs.