Is Anybody HOME?

“Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds. … Teach them to your children when you sit at home and when you walk along the road …” (Deuteronomy 11:18-19)

Do you ever wonder how much of our technological advancements are really advancements? It would seem most households could be run remotely these days. In the so-called “smart homes,” the security system, the lights, heat, even the refrigerator’s inventory can be managed off sight with the use of apps on our “smart phones.”

For those who must be away from home, I understand that these innovations can be real stress-relievers. God calls some of us to the work place. And, I certainly don’t deny that some away time can be good for the soul. But I wonder about the wisdom of routinely managing a home remotely. One of our ministry friends said, that while the husband is the head of the home; the wife is “the heart of the home.”

“Homemaking” is a rarely used word these days, in part because feminists would have us believe that life begins and ends with the “me”—my pleasure. Their view is that home, marriage and family is a thankless occupation, which only enslaves. Although I was a former Home Economics grad (economics defined by Webster as “relating to the production, distribution, or management of wealth”), it’s apparent to me that there’s a lot more to making a home than managing, producing and, distributing stuff.

Quite to the contrary, the woman in her home is creating a space in which people will flourish to the glory of God. Those of you who have the option of being home have the privilege and the freedom to create a place of warmth, acceptance, security, and comfort for your family that no technological advances can duplicate. Moms are irreplaceable in the life of a child. I have to concur with the wise man who wrote, “Fathers don’t mother and mothers don’t father.” God gifted us females with a nontransferable capability of bearing children and then gave us the instincts to nurture and cherish them.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam named his wife “Eve” (life-giver) because she would be the mother of the living. As a mother we are fulfilling the biblical mandate to “be fruitful and multiply.” Whether or not we have biological children, we are life-givers. God’s wisdom is timeless: “The older women … are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” Titus 2:5

Friends, your investment in training, teaching, and telling your children about the “glorious deeds of the Lord” will yield rewards that extend far beyond your lifetime. First, you are playing an essential part in God’s work to prepare a people for Himself! And secondly, you are taking part in shaping our culture to give this nation a future and a hope.

As the years are rolling by, I’m becoming more and more thoughtful about my legacy, not with the inscription on my tombstone or the ways in which my stuff will be parceled out—but with the wisdom I am leaving behind for the next generation to pass on to their children about the love and life of Christ Jesus.

What are you leaving behind for the next generation?