day no. 15,666: an army with banners

Song of Songs 6:10
Who is she that looketh forth as the morning,
fair as the moon, clear as the sun,
and terrible as an army with banners?

An army with banners on your horizon and in your opposition is a terrible prospect. Think of all that is implied by an army with banners.

This is not something that sprung up overnight. This is not some flash mob saber rattling. This is an organized group of soldiers marching on your world.

If they have banners, plural, they are uniform -- each bearing the same colors and symbols. This army is unified under a single head and carry with them the traditions of their fathers. At some point, their ancestors decided what they would stand for and what best represented this in symbol. This symbol has a shape and a form consistent with who they are. The design was discussed and agreed upon, materials in keeping with the motif were gathered and assembled by diligent, dedicated, dexterous hands, and quality control measures were implemented to ensure continuity so as to result in banners, plural, uniform in saying the exact same thing. 

An army with banners is large enough to spare some of their men for the sole purpose of brandishing these banners. They have prioritized their organizing principles enough to have banners and to set men aside to waive them. This displays not only the organization of a formidable opponent, but the prioritization of a potentially lethal one.

If you're going to have to face an army, you'd prefer them not to have banners. Banners declare organization, prioritization, tenacity and tradition. This army arrives to fight under and for a banner. The individuals have given their lives to this, but they fight for something more than just there individual lives. They fight for the kingdom their banner represents, for their brothers standing next to them under the same banner, for the people who live under that same banner back at home, for the principles and ideals which these banners represent, and for the lives and traditions of all those who lived and died under these same banners before them.

In short, an army with banners on your horizon and in your opposition is a terrible prospect.

A Christian woman of this character is the glory of her company and a terror to her opposition. The kingdom of darkness trembles at the sight of her on their horizon. May we raise our daughters as we raise our banners, for His glory and our neighbor's good. May our young women aspire to be the right kind of terrible, the kind that God finds delightful and the world finds dreadful. May the banner of the good, true and beautiful waive above them and on their heads as they wage war in their feminine strength of building homes that build communities that build countries that conquer the world. 

Women are born with generations and nations within them.