The Root of Joy

The reason a woman wants a beauty to unveil, the reason she asks, Do you delight in me? is simply that God does as well. God is captivating beauty. As David prays, “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may...gaze upon the beauty of the LORD” (Ps. 27:4). Can there be any doubt that God wants to be worshiped? That he wants to be seen, and for us to be captivated by what we see? As C. S. Lewis wrote, “The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male...to desire the enjoying of her own beauty is the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes of her own delightfulness.”

This is far too simple an outline, I admit. There is so much more to say, and these are not hard and rigid categories. A man needs to be tender at times, and a woman will sometimes need to be fierce. But if a man is only tender, we know something is deeply wrong, and if a woman is only fierce, we sense she is not what she was meant to be. If you’ll look at the essence of little boys and little girls, I think you’ll find I am not far from my mark. Strength and beauty. As the psalmist says,

One thing God has spoken,
two things have I heard:
that you, O God, are strong,
and that you, O Lord, are loving. (Ps. 62:11–12)

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