Captivating

Today I plunged into Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge and I could not stop reading. John is the author of Wild at Heart, a book on masculinity from a Christian perspective. In Captivating he and his wife take up the challenge of "Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul."

Wow! Tall order, eh! But when my wife said she wanted to cry after reading the first chapter, I knew Staci had managed to speak to women as clearly as John spoke to men in Wild at Heart. Captivating is already opening my eyes to things I already knew but never acknowledged (and that are going to be hard to admit to my wife). This paragraph adequately summarizes the message I needed to hear:

Beauty.
I (John) just let out a deep sigh. The we even need to explain how beauty is so absolutely essential to God only shows how dull we have grown to him, to the world in which we live, and to Eve. Far too many years of our own spiritual lives were lived with barely a not to beauty, to the central role that beauty plays in the life of God, and in our own lives. We held to the importance of truth and goodness. Had you suggested beauty to us, we might have nodded, but not really understood. How could we have missed this? (Captivating, 34)

Ouch. Missed this indeed. It's high time we started to learn to value beauty as a good in itself. Not shun, hide, or ignore it. And I need to value my Beauty for the beauty she offers--the physical and spiritual forms. After all...

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...gave upon the beauty of the LORD" (Ps. 27:4). Can there be any doubt that God wants to be worshipped? That He wants to be seen, and for us to be captivated by what we see? (Wild at Heart) [Captivating, 35 emphasis mine]

For more on John and Stasi Eldredge visit Ransomed Heart Ministries.