My toddler Tori is a happy and fearless sixteen month old. She has a grin as wide as her face and a reckless determination to get her way. I wonder what she’ll be like at sixteen years old. The very thought is an inducement to prayer!
This morning Steve read me a prayer from Psalm 144:12 that I plan to make my own for Tori (and Jack, of course): “May our sons in their youth be like plants full grown, our daughters like corner pillars cut for a structure of a palace.”
What a beautiful prayer to shape our hopes and dreams for our daughters—that they may be like “corner pillars cut for a structure of a palace.” It’s a striking image of a woman’s role as fleshed out in Proverbs 31 and Titus 2. This verse pictures young women “both occupying a secure position in the building and at the same time giving stability to the building in which they are themselves secure—the position of the wife and mother in a well-ordered society” (The New Bible Commentary). Or, more simply, as “the supports and the ornaments of domestic life” (John Pye Smith).
My prayer for Tori is first and foremost that God would save her sinful soul. But I also pray that, whether single or married, He would help me fashion her as a “support and ornament of domestic life.” That by the age of sixteen she would be a holy, humble, happy, home-loving girl.
Not only is this my prayer, but it will also be the focus of my training. And that’s the subject of our posts this week (at your request). How do we train our daughters to be competent homemakers, to give stability to the family in which they themselves are stable?
More thoughts to come….
