5/11/52

Scripture: Philippians 4: 1-9.

Text: Philippians 4: 7; “May the peace of God that passeth all understanding be in your hearts and minds.”

Mother’s Day has been an occasion, since its establishment and general observance, for a good deal of attention to mothers of every age. Tributes to aged mothers of the earth, and to mothers who have gone on into the life beyond, have ranged from simple sincerity to maudlin sentimentality. Some have liked it, and some good and true mothers have been a bit rebellious over it.

It is just as well to remember younger mothers as well, who are now in the midst of the work and the worry, the joy, the perplexity, and the hopeful confidence of bearing and rearing their children. But what would a mother be without children? without the father? There isn’t really any mother without a family!

And so the official Mother’s day has exhibited a strong tendency to become a family day --- and the church service marking it a Festival of the Christian Home. Just as children are blessed in having a loving, devoted, intelligent mother who believes in them, works and plays with them, prays with and for them, so a mother is adorned chiefly by the character of her children and the kind of lives they exemplify. Hence the importance of the Christian home.

We believe in the home because it is the first and greatest among institutions. The home seems to be established in the unfolding will of God and it is recognized as a main source of our country’s true greatness. The family is the basic unit of our civilization, and its character is the foundation of our way of life. A great need of our country, and a greater need for the whole world, is the need for more Christian homes.

We have all seen houses built in a few months, or a few weeks. But it takes longer to build a Christian home. Such a home cannot be made by hanging on the wall a motto: “God Bless Our Home.” That is a good reminder and the beginning of a prayer for the home. But the Christian home has to be built on love. God put in mankind the urge for companionship; and this urge finds satisfaction in the experiences of mating and parenthood, when those experiences are built together with love and effort.

The products of a Christian home are many: sharing, discipline, corporate unity, the deep and abiding conviction of safety in love, the technique for multiplying joys, the capacity to sing in the face of sunshine and joy, or in the face of sorrow, loss and even death.

There is an atmosphere about a Christian home that gives color to life’s purposes and relationships and that builds life’s imponderables: loyalty, imagination, joy, laughter and affection. And these imponderables are sustained by reverence, modesty, tact, delicacy and common sense.

Now all is not well with the home, unless we make it so. Conditions change swiftly. Things are never “what they used to be.” Some of the tools of homemaking and housekeeping have changed. The churn gave way to the commercial dairy plant. The cookstove gave way to the gas or electric range. The factory replaced the spinning wheel and the knitting needles. The phonograph disappeared before the radio and radio even more swiftly gave way before television. The housing and tools of the home are changing swiftly.

We are conscious of the great strain imposed by the two world wars of our time and the constant possibility of another. A first casualty in war is the home: (1) separated families - some broken; (2) many hasty marriages; (3) youth exposed to unwholesome entertainment, and (4) in occupied areas thousands of children born out of wedlock.

The total resourcefulness of our homes is needed for building a better world in which to live. The millions of homes across our nation have a mighty, potential power in achieving a better world. And so we are concerned about the way we live and act in our homes. For a home, whether housed in a palace or a cabin, which is characterized by love, cooperation and the Christian spirit, has untold power for good.

A home lacking in these qualities adds to the conflict and bitterness of the world. Unstable families create a “vicious circle” by sending into society maladjusted individuals who make trouble for themselves and others, aggravate social ills, and, when they marry, set up other unstable families.

But there is a “blessed circle” in the life of wholesome families. Members of such a family are characterized by mental and emotional good health. They are cooperative, self-respecting and considerate. Their practice of democracy at home sends out currents of good into the world. The children of such homes achieve a high average rate of success in the homes which they, in turn, establish.

Marriage is a sacred covenant between two souls pledged to hold each other in respect and love, to face life’s tasks together; to be each other’s complement; to build a home within their dwelling. The home is built in the keeping of such covenant.

It is built further in another covenant, when each of those lives that are born into the home are consecrated to God in baptism. And again, two people agree willingly, and desirously, to train their children in the knowledge and the attitudes of the Christian faith. The most searching questions that can be asked in the home are these: have I, and have we, faithfully performed the sacred vows of our marriage and the sacred vows we took in the baptism of our children? There must be a large place for Christian instruction in our homes. For religious grounding and foundation was never more important or urgent than it is in our time. The home is the smallest group unit in our society. But it is the key to our whole order.

The cooperative spirit in the home is the best antidote there is for the selfishness that plagues and corrupts life. Life is at its best when we live it for others. Group life implies duties and restraints. Parents and children can work together and ought to play together.

A mechanic, after a hard day’s work, was catching baseball with his son. A friend looked over the fence and called out, “Hey, Bill, aren’t you tired?” “Sure I’m tired,” he replied. “Well, what under this hot summer sun are you doing that for?” And the father of the little boy replied, “O, I’d rather have a backache now than a heartache later on.”

The marks of a Christian home are: (1) first, a Christian husband and wife; Christian parents - belonging to a church in active participation and regular attendance; (2) second, family concern for reading acquaintance with the Bible and daily devotion in prayer, at meal times or other devotions, Christian literature, books, choice music; (3) third, an atmosphere that gives Christian motivation to living.

An associate of Moses, Joshua, possessed a deep religious conviction. This is what he said about his own home: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” He recognized that religion, morality and patriotism had their beginning in the home. Our homes ought to be places that know the peace of God. It is not always so. This is understandable, because homes, like individual persons, are imperfect, and all the length of our lives it should be our effort to perfect them.

It is not amiss to ask why it is that many homes, instead of being places of peace, are arenas of conflict.

We watch with happiness as a man and a woman walk down the aisles of the church on their wedding day, understandably nervous, yet having in their eyes the gloss of a great faith in their sublime venture together. If each is a little apprehensive, yet each is convinced that their marriage is formed in heaven as they promise, earnestly, each to the other “to love and to cherish till death shall part us.”

But in far too many instances, as the months and years go by, one sees the lines of tension draw tight around their eyes. Immature crevices create pitfalls for their happiness. And even though the marriage does not break, there is little peace in some homes. One longs to do something; to say or suggest something, or just to lend an ear to the problems in order to help with the return of happiness.

If a man’s home is his castle, where he should find peace and contentment, a retreat from the battles of life, yet sometimes, pathetically enough, that is where the battles start.

A young fellow asks, “Why can’t my wife treat me as well as she treats the garbage man?” And his counselor could reply, knowing his failures in character, “Because you are one deserving of no more than scraps.”

Sometimes the conflicts at home are essentially the conflicts of one’s own mind. And, because all barriers are down, we treat those in our own home as we treat our own mind. If we are at sword’s point with self, we get at sword’s point with family.

A young fellow went to talk with the minister who had married him and his bride some while before. He claimed his wife was a slovenly housekeeper. She didn’t want him to stay in the house, nor did she want to make a home for him. The young wife, coming also to their minister, told an opposite kind of story. She felt that he wasn’t interested in helping to build a home. All he wanted was someone to pick up after him. As more conversations were held, it appeared that the wife was desperately unhappy but strove valiantly to keep the marriage intact. But the husband was a bundle of nervous conflicts. His mother had always taken especially solicitous care of him when he was a child, picking up all his things after him and taking him to school so that other boys would not light into him. He had resented it, but also like it! He resented his mother’s dominance, but he like the attention!

When he was married he expected the same attention from his wife. And he was prepared to resent the slightest suspicion of dominance. So that she was largely in the position of being a servant rather than a partner. It took a long time for the wife to see that what she thought was pure selfishness on his part was the projection of an inner conflict in his heart that she was only beginning to understand. Their trouble was not incompatibility with each other, but was rather the incompatibility within the mind of each. When the wife understood the husband’s immaturity of mind at that point, she found ways to help him. When the husband recognized, through some pain, how he had grown up, the source of their conflict began to heal, and they began to do their growing together.

A hundred years ago -- girls used to make an old fashioned Sampler spending days on its intricate design and putting it at length with their hope chests. One sampler made by a girl for her hope chest, then taken out and hung on the wall of their home when she was married, had this design: Across the top were the words: “A Man’s Home Is His Castle.” Beneath that was worked in petit point the design of a castle with a woman looking out over the turret and a man coming in the gate. Underneath the picture were the words, “Faithfulness” and “Patience.” A couple of generations later that Sampler may have appeared to grandchildren a cobwebby dustcatcher. But it did something for that girl to labor for long hours over something that focused her mind on simple, basic virtues of living. And when she was married, and her husband saw her work, he too was reminded of those same virtues.

Marriage requires the same kind of faithfulness with each other that God places in us. That is why marriage is a religious rite, a commitment -- more than an emotional attraction or a psychological adjustment. Marriage is created in heaven. But it is our responsibility to keep it there, to keep God’s heavenly faith so flowing into our own minds that we overrule all sense of resentment and bitterness by understanding and affection. By offering, each to the other, the same kind of faith and loyalty which God places in us we can find the peace of God which passes all understanding, keeping our hearts and minds in His peace. But the peace of God is not the peace of death. It is the peace of life. And life is effort, struggle.

The ancient Hindu philosopher had the notion that peace came through death, the negation of all sensation; the denial of life itself. Not so. For peace often comes with accomplishment; through struggle; sometimes even out of pain. It is not a dead thing. It must be striven for.

It is perfectly obvious that two individual people will have differences due to background, tastes, habits, preferences. Egos will conflict. They can argue over lemon meringue pie, or who shall sleep on which side of the bed, or whether the toothpaste tube can be left without the cap on. A little patience can take care of such trivia. But how do we get patience? A woman prayed for patience; so the Lord sent her a provoking husband to help her develop it. Patience is given by God even in the form of a cross.

-- a woman can be really beautiful, not because of the lines of her facial features, but because her husband and her children really regard her as beautiful.

Here and there a man is made into a great man by a wife who believes in him. Such a wife was asked about her secret by a counselor who felt that her husband must really be a difficult person to live with. She said, “I look at my husband as God might see him. He is a great man, really.”

Children ------ made accomplished by the faith of their parents.

The good Lord sees the greatness of each character and expects us to earn the peace of our homes by our efforts together.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, May 11, 1952.