Words of Wisdom for Home
Hello dear readers! It has been a while. The last several months we have been experiencing some significant life changes as we bought our first home and moved to a brand new town, relocated both of our jobs, and found out we are expecting our first baby boy! Though I didn’t intend on taking a break from writing here, it has been helpful to slow down while we are settling into our new normal.
However, I am eager to get back to writing and though I have quite a bit of my own usual written material to share in the coming months, I thought I would ease back into blogging by sharing with you some words from one of my favorite authors, J.R. Miller. I first discovered his book, Homemaking, last year and to say it is the treasure of my bookshelf would be an understatement. One of the reasons I so dearly love this book is that it gives a whole perspective of home, not just the version of homemaking we might immediately think of. For example, here are the chapters… The Wedded Life, The Christian Husband, The Christian Wife, The Parents Part, The Childrens Part, Brothers & Sisters, The Home-Life, Religion in the Home, and Home Memories. His work brings together all of the necessary parts that make up a healthy, God-honoring home and highlights the responsibility of each member. I believe it is a book for all.
I leave you with some passages that I have underlined in my personal copy, as well as sections I have “dog-eared” to return back to again and again. Until I write again, I hope you enjoy these excerpts and I hope you are encouraged to continue seeking The Lord in this area of your life - and decide to purchase your own copy! Please keep in mind that when you see ellipses within the quotes, I am paraphrasing for the sake of length. However, I have not removed anything that changes the central point or integrity of what J.R. Miller is communicating.
The Wedded Life:
“As a relationship, marriage is the closest and most sacred on earth. The relation between a parent and a child is very close. Children are taught in scripture to honor their parents, to revere them, to cleave to them, to brighten and bless their lives in every possible way. Yet, the marriage relation is put above the filial, for a man is to leave his father and mother, give up his old home with all it’s sacred ties and memories, and cleave to his wife. After marriage a husbands first and highest duties are to his wife - and a wife to her husband. The two are to live for each other. Life is to be lost for life. Every other interest is thenceforward secondary to the home interest.”
“True love seeks not its own; it delights in being foremost in forgiving and yielding. There is no lesson that husbands and wives need more to learn, than instantly and always to seek forgiveness of each other whenever they are conscious of having in any way caused pain or committed a wrong.”
“Another secret of happiness in married life is courtesy…. is wedded love such a strong vigorous and self-sufficing plant that it never needs sunshine, rain, or dew?… On the contrary, there is no place in the world where the amenities of courtesy should be so carefully maintained, as in the home. There are no hearts which hunger so for expressions of affection, as the hearts of which we are most sure. There is no love which so needs its daily bread - as the love that is strongest and holiest. There is no place where rudeness or incivility is so unpardonable, as inside our own doors and towards our best beloved! The tenderer the love and the truer, the more it craves the thousand little attentions and kindnesses which so satisfy the heart! It is not costly presents at Christmas, birthdays, or anniversaries that are needed: these are only mockeries if the days between are empty of affectionate expressions. Jewelry and silks will never atone for the lack of warmth and tenderness….”
The Christian Husband:
“Each member of the household has a part in the family life, and the fullest happiness and blessedness of the home can be attained, only when each ones part is faithfully fulfilled… The husband has a part all his own, which no other can do. How does the word of God define his duties?.. The scripture gives the measure of love which husbands are to bear to their wives; ‘Husbands, love your wives - even as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for it.’ (Ephesians 5) In the true husband who realizes all that this divine command involves, selfishness dies at the marriage altar, He thinks no longer of his own comfort - but of his wife’s. He denies himself that he may bring new pleasures and comforts to her. He counts no sacrifice too great to be made which will bring benefit to her.”
“The wife yields all up to the husband, giving herself in the fullest sense. Will he be faithful in the holy trust reposed to his hands? Will he cherish her happiness as a precious jewel - bearing all things, enduring all things, for her sake? Will he seek her highest good, to help her to build up in herself the noblest womanhood? Is he worthy to receive into his keeping, all that her confiding love lays at his feet?”
“There are some fathers who seem to forget that any share of the burden and duty of making the home-life also belongs to them. They leave it all to the mothers. They come and go as if they were scarcely more than boarders in their own house, with no active interest in the welfare of their children! They plead the demands of business as an excuse for their neglect. But where is the business that is so important, as to justify a mans evasion of the sacred duties which he owes to his own family? There cannot be any other work in this world which a man can do, which will excuse him at Gods eternal judgement, for having neglected the care of his own home and the training of his own children! No success in the department of the worlds work can possibly atone for his failure here.”
The Christian Wife:
“It is a high honor for a woman to be chosen from among all womankind, to be the wife of a Godly and true man.”
“Every true wife makes her husbands interests her own. While he lives for her, carrying her image in his heart and toiling for her all the days - she thinks only of what will do him good. When burdens press upon him - she tries to lighten them by sympathy, by cheer, by the inspiration of love. She is not a weight to drag him down; she is strength in his heart to help him ever to do nobler and better things…. Not all wives are blessings to their husbands… But a true wife makes a mans life nobler, stronger, grander, by the omnipotence of her loves, turning all the forces of manhood upward and heavenward. While she clings to him in holy confidence and loving dependence, she brings out in him whatever is noble and rich in his being. She inspires him with courage and earnestness. She beautifies his life. She softens whatever is crude and harsh in his habits or spirit. She clothes him with the gentler graces of refined and cultured manhood.. Her husband feels the mighty inspiration of her love all his life. Toil is easier, burdens are lighter, battles are less fierce - because of the face that waits in the quiet of the home.”
“It should be understood that for every wife the first duty is the making and keeping of her own home! She must look upon her home as the one spot on earth for which she alone is responsible, and which she must cultivate well for God.. There have been wives who in their zeal for Christs work outside, have neglected Christs work inside their very own doors.. let it be remembered that Christ’s work in the home is the first that he gives every wife and that no amount of consecrated activities in other spheres will atone for the neglect or failure there.”
“Every true home is an influence of blessing in the community where it stands. Its light shines out. Its songs ring out. Its spirit breathes out. The neighbors know whether it is hospitable or inhospitable, warm or cold, inviting or repelling. Some homes bless no lives outside their own circle, others are perpetually pouring out sweetness and fragrance. The ideal Christian home is a far-reaching blessing. It sets it’s lamps in the windows, and while they give no less light and cheer to those within, they pour a little beam upon the gloom without, which may brighten some dark path and put a little cheer into the heart of some poor passer-by.”
The Parents Part:
“God has constituted us, that in loving and caring for our own children - the richest and best things in our natures are drawn out. Many of the deepest and most valuable lessons ever learned are read from the pages of unfolding child life. We best understand the feelings and affections of God toward us - when we bend over our own child and see in our human parenthood, a faint image of His divine Fatherhood.”
“It is a great thing to take these young and tender lives, rich with so many possibilities of beauty, of joy, of power, all of which may be wrecked, and to become responsible for their shaping and their training, and for the upbuilding of their character. This is what must be thought of in the making of a home. It must be a home in which children will grow up for true and noble life - for God and for heaven. It is upon the parents, that the chief responsibility rests. They are the builders of the home. From them it receives its character, either good or evil. It will be what they make it. If it is happy, they must be the authors of the happiness. If it is an unhappy home, the blame must also rest with them. Its tone, its atmosphere, its spirit, its influence will take from the parents. They have the making of the home in their hands and God holds them responsible for it.”
“A parent may teach the most beautiful things - but if the child does not see these things in the life of a parent, he will not consider them important enough to be adopted into his own life. You cannot give your child what you yourself do not possess. If you are a deceiver, you cannot make him truthful. If you are selfish you cannot make him generous. If you are self-willed you cannot make him yielding.. The parents life flows into the child’s life, and we impress upon them less by what we teach them and more by what we are.”
The Home Life:
“A true home has a peace which is not broken by earths tempests! It’s love is a fountain of blessing - which does not wither in summer weather and is not frozen in the coldest winter. The possibilities of happiness and blessing in household life are simply incalculable. All that is needed is that each member faithfully does his own part.”
“There is nothing insignificant in the life which we live within our own doors. There is nothing which is without influence in the building up of character. On some old rocks the geologist shows you the racks which birds made ages ago, and the print of a leaf which fell, or the dents made by pattering raindrops. It was soft sand then - but hardened afterward into rock which was preserved and made into imperishable records of the history of the day that shone uncounted centuries ago. Let no one think that the history of any day in the life of a home is recorded any less imperishably on the sensitive lives of children.”
Religion in the Home:
“To make a home godless and prayer less, is to send our children out to meet all the worlds evil, without either the shelter of covenant love to cover them in the storm, or the strength of holy principle in their hearts to make them able to endure.”
“Shall we call our home a Christian home, and yet never worship Christ within our doors? Shall we call ourselves God’s children, and yet never offer any praise to our Father? Should there not be some difference between a Christian and a non-Christian home? Should not God’s children live differently from the children of this world?”
“Where the Bible is read every day in a home, in the ears of children, and its lessons simply and prayerfully taught - the effect is incalcuable!… Can any parents who desire to see their children become Christians, afford to lose out on such an influence?.. The excuses which are offered for the omission are familiar. One pleads lack of time, but he finds time for everything else that he really wants to do!”
Home Memories:
“We are fast moving on through this world. Soon all that will remain of us will be the memories of our lives. No part of our work will then afford such a true test of our living, as the memorials we leave behind us in our homes. No other work that God gives any of us to do is so important, so sacred, so far reaching in its influence, so delicate and easily marred - as our home-making. This is the work of all our life - that is the most divine. The carpenter works in wood, the mason works in stone, the smith works in iron, the artist works on canvas, but the homemaker works on immortal lives… If we do nothing else well in this world, let us at least build well within our own doors.”
Blessings to you -
