Havens of Refuge for Tempted Youth

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Feb 25, 1915

Havens of Refuge for Tempted Youth

How welcome is the quiet harbor to the storm-tossed vessel! How much better still is such a shelter before the storm breaks! The following paragraphs were written by one who loves the young people and has tried to express that love in a practical way. Modestly the author asks that her name be withheld. Personally, I know that the efforts of this family have extended farther than here indicated. Young people who were anxious to obtain an education and showed willingness to exert themselves to obtain it, have been aided financially. Such efforts for our youth will be richly rewarded here and hereafter.

“In the months when ‘he’ and I were planning our home life together, these words from ‘Ministry of Healing,’ pages 354, 355, came to me over and over again: ‘Our homes should be a place of refuge for the tempted youth. Many there are who stand at the parting of the ways. Every influence, every impression, is determining the choice that shapes their destiny both here and hereafter. . . . All about us are youth who have no home, and many whose homes have no helpful, uplifting power. . . . These youth need a hand stretched out to them in sympathy. . . . From our homes will flow streams of healing, bringing life, and beauty, and fruitfulness where are now barrenness and death.’”

“We married, and settled down to home life, becoming members of a church with a little group of children and young people. They were just the usual kind — some married out of the truth, some stood at the parting of the ways, and some were too young to comprehend what the rest were doing.

“Well, we started a young people’s society, and because it seemed best, we held the meetings in our home. On Sabbath afternoon a part of the flock often

came home to dinner with us. They were just the ordinary dinners that we usually had, made large enough to meet the occasion, with sometimes an extra dish that some of us particularly liked. The girls and I prepared it, and cleared the table afterwards, while husband and the boys visited. And then until meeting time, when the rest came, we played and sang, or read, or talked, just as we individually liked.

“Meeting over, some lingered till the short Sabbath afternoon had passed, and joined with us in worship, and maybe told their hopes and fears as the twilight deepened. Or in the long afternoons of spring, there were delightful trips out into the wild beauty of nature. About the only cost of all this was the sacrifice of our own quiet afternoon together, for study and reading. The reward came in seeing our boys and girls spend the Sabbath hours profitably, and grow strong and self-reliant because of the responsibilities that were resting on them.

“The doors have often swung to those who wanted a home for a few hours or days, or sometimes weeks. What have they come for?—O, help with lessons, hot fomentations, rest, sympathy, and sometimes advice!

“I’d like to tell you of my careless, motherless girl, who had to be brought home occasionally, doctored up for some ailment, then gently made to put on sufficient warm clothing to avoid having the same ailment again. And then there was our homeless boy, who had drifted out into the world. I like to remember the afternoon we talked the whole thing over after dinner, the boy and husband and I. And I like better to remember the next day when he came to tell us that the choice had been made for God and right. He is now in one of our training schools.

“And so they have come, and as they have left us, happier and stronger, I have thought of the possibilities of our ‘havens of refuge,’ the blessedness of their ministry, the crying need for many of them.”

M. E. KERN.