Male and Female Created He Them

"Male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

I give God thanks for maleness and femaleness. For diversity and oneness. For sugar and spice and everything nice, on the one hand; and for snakes and snails and puppy dog tails, on the other. Thank God for the distinction of the sexes and for the oneness of the flesh.

I give God thanks for Adam and Eve, for husbands and wives, for mothers and fathers, for ancestors and ancestresses, for all the world of men and women who have joined God—at His invitation—in making this world what it is.

I give God thanks for men who have worked in the field and women who have worked at home. I give God thanks for women who have worked in the field and in the home, and for husbands who have worked in both places alongside them.

I give God thanks for a man’s initiative and for a woman’s intuition (uncanny and uncomfortable as it can be for us men). I thank God for making men more one thing and women more another and for throwing us together that we might learn from one another. Thank God for weaker vessels and stronger vessels who are co-heirs of the grace of life. God help us to live with one another in understanding.

I give God thanks for the way of a man with a maiden, as wonderful as a ship at sea, a snake on a rock, or an eagle in flight (all of which are too wonderful for me—I cannot understand them). I give God thanks for His built-in design for attraction to the opposite sex and for the equally God-given instinct for devotion and faithfulness and loyalty to one other for life.

I give God thanks for wives and daughters, for helpmeets, for companionship, for co-regents—queens—to rule over the world alongside men. I give thanks for my wife, for my two daughters, for the joy and goodness and industry and femininity they bring to our home. I give God thanks for not leaving me alone because He knew it was not good for me to be alone, because He knew I was better off living in society, with a woman, with this one woman, and with the be-fruitful-and-multiplied family who came of our oneness.

Give thanks to God for men and women, boys and girls, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, boyfriends and girlfriends, grandpas and grandmas. Give thanks for courtships and weddings, for long-and happy-but-not-because-it’s-easy marriages, for kisses and hugs, for oneness of body/soul/spirit.

“Lord God, we give You thanks for the wonderful way in which You have made us, for making us male and female. Grant grace to us as we live with one another as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, as men and women. Teach us how to honor one another, be grateful for one another, appreciate one another, and be at peace with one another. Grant us oneness in the midst of our God-created diversity, and teach us to glory in our differences as we pursue the unity of purpose with which You created us in the beginning. We give You thanks most of all for our Lord Jesus Christ and for the great mystery of making us His bride, spotless and glorious in time, and we pray in His name. Amen.”