Bible Text: Proverbs 31:10 | Speaker: Darlene Sala | Series: Encouraging Words | Pastor Ron Mehl tells about a Pacific island where the custom was that when you found a girl you wanted to marry, you paid your future father-in-law a certain number of cows for his daughter. For two or three cows you could buy a perfectly adequate wife. For four or five cows you got an above-average one.

Now, Johnny Lingo loved a girl names Sarita who was thin and very plain. She walked with her shoulders hunched and her head down. But Johnny became the talk of the community when he paid Sarita’s father eight cows so that he could marry her. Everyone said he had been cheated.

A short time later a visitor who had heard about the marriage came to Johnny’s house to do some business with him. When he saw Sarita, he was amazed. She was not at all what he had heard about but was one of the loveliest women he had ever seen.

Johnny saw the surprised look on his visitor’s face, and when Sarita left the room, he turned to his guest and said, “Have you ever thought about what it must mean to a woman to know that her husband settled on the lowest price for which she could be bought? Did you ever wonder what it must feel like when women boast about what their husbands paid for them? One says, ‘Four cows,” another “five cows,’ or maybe even ‘six.’ How does she feel, the woman who was sold for one or two? I decided this must not happen to my Sarita,” said Johnny. “I loved her. I wanted her and everyone else to know that she is worth more than any other woman to me.”[1]

Friend, maybe you didn’t buy your wife with cows. But she still loves to hear how much she means to you. Proverbs 31:10 says, “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.” You can tell her how special she is with even a single rose or some candy, but what she probably wants most is your undivided attention. Tonight would be the perfect time.

[1] i Ron Mehl, The Ten(der) Commandments (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 1998), 182-183.