Some words to ponder today and to think of every day:
Christianity begins in the home. If not there, it is nowhere. We may attend meetings, and sing hymns, and join devoutly in prayer. We may give money to the poor, and send missionaries and Bibles to the heathen. We may organize societies of every description for doing good. We may get up church fairs, and tea-parties and tableaux and picnics. We may, in short, devote all our time and all our means to doing good, and yet not be the true and earnest Christians we ought to be, after all.
If they cannot say of us in the family at home; “He, or she, is a Christian, we know it, we feel it,” –if home is not a better and happier place for our living in it, if there is not an influence going out from us, day by day, silently drawing those about us in the right direction, then it is time for us to stop where we are, and begin to examine our profession to the name of Christian.
Christianity. Christ-likeness. Is that ours? Are we possessed of that? Are we patient, kind, long-suffering, forbearing, seeking with all our hearts to do good, dreading with all our hearts to do evil? For if we are Christ’s we shall be like Him; and the first fruits, and the best fruits of our daily living will be in the better and happier lives of those who are about us day by day.
~ John Angell James in Golden Thoughts of Mother, Home and Heaven, edited by Gene Fedele.
How is it with you at home, dear mother? Do your children witness Christ-likeness in your attitude, countenance, and behavior every day? Does your husband? What good does it do for our husbands and children when they see us worried, impatient, fretful, or angry?
Oh, dear mothers, let us ponder and meditate upon these words. Let us bow before the Lord in humility and ask for forgiveness for where we have strayed and erred. Let us repent of our sins and lack of love for our families. Let us ask for the Lord’s help to do as He wills, rather than what our sinful hearts desire.
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(Painting is A Mother's Darling Painting by George Goodwin Kilburn)
