Let’s Hear It For the Boys

Source: frenchbydesign.blogspot.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Probably like you, I have a lot of women I love and admire. I keep them in a growing corner of my heart, these women that inspire me to be fearless and strong, alive and holy. My sisters, my mothers, my friends, they are singing freedom and guts to me down through the ages, from the pages of Scripture as apostles and leaders to the church mothers to my humble friends of these days, here in my daily walking around life. Yes, you, my sisters through the words of SheLoves here, you are part of that, too.

But today, may we say this, here in this little corner of the Internet, dedicated to the voice and experiences of women? 

To the men of our world, to our fathers and brothers and husbands: Thank you.

Thank you for standing up for, and with, us. We see you loving the women in your life well, we see you honouring us–your wives, your sisters, your mothers, your grandmothers, your daughters, your friends–we see you serving with abandon, we see you hungering for justice, we see your dedication to purity, to wisdom, to knowledge, to honour, to respect, to beauty, to mercy. We see you working and loving and fighting and dreaming. We see your heart, your mind, your strength.

Thank you for studying and researching, for writing books, for blogging and speaking, for teaching and pastoring and leading your brothers by example, in word and deed, for releasing fearful rhetoric and embracing conversation.

Thank you for sticking around. Thank you for being a real dad, day in and day out, thank you for all the ways that you love us, seen and unseen.

Thank you for choosing to grow up, to leave behind the childish and destructive appetites for pure goodness.

Thank you for living true manhood, true fatherhood, in a spirit of faithfulness and humility.

Thank you for your tenderness, your gentleness, your peace-making heart.

Thank you for engaging joyfully in mutually submissive marriages, for raising your daughters alongside your sons to ask themselves “What has God called you to do with your one wild and precious life, my darling?”

Thank you for honouring work as holy and shared co-creation. Thank you for pausing in your talking to listen to us, too, for making space for our voice, for inviting us. Thank you for living a better truth.

Thank you for building this beautiful picture of life in the Kingdom, all of us working alongside each other, as a seeking, a vision, a motley collection of prophets, a foretaste, a sign, all of us with different stories, different reasons, different voices, crying out and praying and working and welcoming, for freedom and wholeness, for restoration and redemption.

We see you.

We honour you.

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So, my SheLoves friends … your turn:

• Who is the man in your life that you wish to thank today? And why?

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He Is: For Father’s Day, Relate Church has created this beautiful wallpaper (for your phone or desktop or Pinterest board) to inspire us as we pray for, love and believe in the men in our world. Download your own copy here.