We are Feminine, but…. (Tara Beth Leach)

A clip from Tara Beth Leach’s post at Missio Alliance:

We have short hair and we have long hair; dirt is under our fingernails from toiling under the sun just to make a living and our fingernails are nicely manicured with pink nail polish; we enjoy high tea and we sometimes enjoy a beer at the pub; we stay at home with the children, care for our husbands, and support their careers, but we also choose wear the blue pant suits and run corporations. We wear yoga pants, leggings, mom jeans, cargo shorts, long skirts, and daisy dukes.  You see, our femininity is not rooted in ideology or cultural norms; our femininity is rooted in our humanity, which is firmly rooted in the humanity of Christ. It is the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of King Jesus that informs the theology of our bodies. Our bodies sometimes bear children and they sometimes don’t, but childbearing isn’t our identity; instead, our bodies and identities are ordered in the saving and transforming activity of the Triune God.

Our embodied lives are firmly rooted in Jesus Christ as we are made holy by the empowering presence of the Spirit.  It is the Spirit that informs our decisions in the office place, at home, behind a cashier’s counter, and in our relationships; it is by the Spirit that we are shaped into the women we were created to be – Biblical women, holy women, and daughters of the resurrection. Eschatology and resurrection informs our identities, not creation or brokenness.[1]  We are beautiful, strong, courageous, quiet, submissive, outspoken, tender, fierce and holy. It is precisely as Beth Felker Jones writes, “When death is finally no more, we will be shaped entirely by the love embodied in Jesus Christ…our bodies are for praise, praise of the one who is victor over death, who will shape us into witnesses to beauty, to goodness, to holiness, and to peace.”[2]