What Is Under The Scarf

There is a difference between a covering you chose and a covering you now require, and only one of them is free.

I want to start there, because a great deal of confusion gathers around this subject and most of it comes from people who do not distinguish those two things.

A woman may cover her head for a hundred good reasons. Because it is beautiful. Because it is hers. Because it belongs to her family, or her faith, or her way of walking through the world. That is a choice, and a choice can be enjoyed, and there is nothing in this article that touches it.

But somewhere in the last few years something else got underneath yours, and you know it, and that is what we are here about.

It used to come off at home. Now it does not, or not until the last minute, or not while anybody is up. There is a version of the day where it stays on longer than it needs to, and there are certain rooms in your own house where it does not come off at all any more.

Nothing about that is a moral failing. It is not vanity. It is what happens when a covering quietly changes jobs and nobody notices the day it happened.

When a covering changes jobs

Here is the test, and it is a simple one.

A covering you chose feels like something. A covering you need feels like nothing until it is not there.

The difference takes about four seconds to find, honestly asked. Put your hand on it now and ask whether the thought of it being off in your own kitchen for ten minutes produces any feeling at all.

If it does, the job has changed.

You are wearing something that has quietly changed jobs, and the day it changed has never once been marked anywhere. The Holy Spirit is what shows a woman which of two things she is actually doing, and 1 Samuel 16 has God correcting a prophet about what to look at.

And now the cost, which is not what people assume.

The cost is not that anybody sees less of you. Nobody is owed the sight of anybody's head and this article is not going to suggest they are.

The cost is that a room in your own house has become somewhere you are on duty. Home is the one place a body is supposed to be off, and if the covering has to stay on in the kitchen at nine at night, there is nowhere in your life left where nothing has to be managed.

You are on duty in a room where nobody has ever asked you to be, and your own kitchen has never once been a place requiring management. Scripture in 1 Samuel 16 says the Lord looketh on the heart while man looks on the outward appearance, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a woman be off duty in her own house.

Man looketh on the outward appearance

There is a moment where a prophet gets something wrong and God tells him plainly.

But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature, because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7, King James Version)

Notice who is being corrected.

Samuel. A prophet, a good man, somebody who had heard God speak since he was a child. He walked into a room and read a man by his height and his face, and he was completely wrong, and God had to stop him.

That is worth holding on to, because it means the outward reading is not a failing peculiar to you. It is what people do, including the best of them, and it is exactly as unreliable in a prophet as it is in a shop.

You are being read by people whose reading God has never once endorsed, and Samuel himself got it entirely wrong in one look. It is written in 1 Samuel 16 that man looketh on the outward appearance but the Lord looketh on the heart, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lifts an outward reading off a woman.

And now the second half, which is the useful half for you.

The Lord looketh on the heart. That is not only a comfort about how He sees other people. It means He is not, at this moment, reading what is under your scarf, because that is an outward thing and He has said plainly which of the two He looks at.

So the one being in the room whose opinion actually settles anything is not looking at the part you are covering.

You are unread on the exact point you have been covering, and God has never once been looking at the thing you have been managing. The Spirit of God is what takes a woman out from under a gaze that was never there, and the written word says the Lord looketh on the heart.

Ten uncovered minutes

So here is the assignment, and there are two rules that make it safe.

Uncover for ten minutes at home tonight, and do one warm slow thing with no mirror in the room.

The first rule is that this is at home. Not out, not in front of anybody who was not going to be there anyway, and nothing about this article touches what you do outside your own front door. That is yours and it always was.

The second rule is no mirror. This is not an exercise in looking. Looking is the correction and it is not what we came for. Ten minutes of a head being uncovered while you do something ordinary and warm, and not one second of inspection.

You are having ten uncovered minutes with nothing looking at you, and a mirror has never once been the thing that made a head cared for. 1 Samuel 16 says man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room while nothing at all is being checked.

Warm water on your hands. A cup of tea at the table. Sitting down with the radio on.

The point is not to see anything. The point is that there is one part of one evening where nothing is being managed, and there has not been one of those in a long time.

You are able to have ten minutes in your own house with nothing on duty, and there has never once been a rule that home required a covering. The written word in 1 Samuel 16 puts God's attention on the heart rather than the outward, and the Holy Spirit is what turns ten uncovered minutes into care rather than into an exposure.