Every Mother’s Day, store shelves are crammed full with cards and trinkets for “The Best Mom in the World.” What is it, though, that makes a great mom? For that matter, what makes an honorable woman or a good person, in general?

When I think of what makes a great mom, a passage in Proverbs 31: 10-31 comes to mind. It describes “a wife of noble character” and seems to be the go-to chapter to find the ideal traits in a woman. However, when we read Proverbs 31, we often skip ahead to Verse 10 and ignore the first nine verses. The chapter is actually attributed to King Lemuel, and he gives credit to his mother for the sayings.

Get this … as soon as the chapter begins, the king’s mom begs him not to waste his time on women, for fear that they will bring him to ruin. Fast-forward to Verse 10, when she asks: “Who can find a virtuous and capable wife?” as if it’s an impossible feat. She goes on to describe the type of woman she thinks would be good enough for her son—a woman who not only brokers real estate (v. 16), makes homemade meals every day and apparently doesn’t sleep much (v. 15), and is also one of those Martha Stewart types who knows how to make anything from scratch (v. 13, 19, 22, 24). Not to mention, she’s married to a well-to-do man with well-behaved kids, all of whom dote on her publicly (v. 23, 28, 29).

That’s totally my life. Not. Am I the only one who feels a bit sub-par right about now?

Let’s break it down and see if we can make sense of this passage. Some of the verses don’t seem to mean much to us nowadays (I don’t know about you, but I haven’t the foggiest clue how to spin wool, nor do I know anything about merchant ships!), yet there are some timeless principles mingled in here that can apply to all of us: women and men; married and single; parents and childless. So, let’s dig in and focus our daily prayer time on these attributes.