p. 3 | Talking Things Over at Home

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 11, 1916

Talking Things Over at Home

(Printed by request)

The dining-room table was not a silent place in this home. Mealtime meant talking time. It is a poor meal that doesn’t. And as the young people and the father and the mother were eating and talking that day, a question came up that no one could answer. The father pushed back his chair, stepped over toward the window, lifted a big reference volume from its stand, turned over its pages, and in a moment all had the answer to their question. The book was put back into its place, and the meal went on.

That was in the home of H. Clay Trumbull, years ago; and the children of that family, now the heads of homes of their own, have reason to be grateful for the wisdom of the father. He made it a point to have in the dining-room an unabridged dictionary, a cyclopedia of general information, and a geographical gazetteer. These books were not in the adjoining library, but in the dining-room itself; and his purpose in putting them there was to have immediately at hand trustworthy information that would help to make the table talk worth while.

Are we all deliberately and thoughtfully pressing into service every available and simple means of this sort in order that as we “talk things over at home,” our talk shall not be mere chatter, mere unguided opinion, but shall increasingly become more and more profitable as the days and years pass? Are our children as familiar with the use of a Bible dictionary as they are with the use of a Webster? Do they know how to use the Bible concordance? Why should not reference books of this sort become a “commonplace” blessing in the home? It is so easy at the table, or during the home evenings, or on a quiet afternoon, to start a conversation (deliberately, though not too obviously) that will lead on into real riches of history or travel, art or music, or of the Christian life and the Word of God.

In the very crowded program of our homes today there is little enough time to get perspective by absence. It is a blessing that, with the life of the household flowing all around us, we can stand a little away from the routine by moving into others’ environments in the pages of books and magazines.

What mothers have found of value in one home is thus passed on to mothers in other homes. The child who says and does unaccountable things in California has some delightfully close relations down in Maine among the juvenile New Englanders. This is a comfort to the mothers East and West, who can talk it all over in mothers’ books and magazines.

And how the life of the whole land has been sifted and searched for material by writers and editors! Folks know each other better than they did. Things that used to seem strange in one region now get a happy nod of recognition. This better understanding is one of the uses of periodicals, and of books as well.

Within the home, children’s magazines are as good for parents—there is such a being as a father who knows his children—as for the children themselves. Children’s books are often far healthier and much more fascinating to parents than grown-ups’ books with dignified or mysteriously fetching titles, and queer ideas or a bad taste in the mouth after their reading. The mother or father who refuses the joys and misses the training opportunity of a cheery reading-time with the children is drying up at the mental springs of home delights. . . .

Many of us are so afraid to teach sex knowledge to our children that when we try to, the children at once see that we are confused and hesitant. That, in turn, unsettles them, and makes it hard to put great truths simply and unaffectedly before them.

We need have no fear. It is possible to put the whole subject upon its rightfully high plane; to detach it from low suggestion; so to point out the wonder of the reproductive processes in nature, and among animals, and so on up to man, that the deep heart of God’s plan is far more fascinating than the vague and perverted guesses with which children are often misled by their playmates. Any parent can find much help in doing this through sound books on sex teaching. Indeed, the following experience was greatly enriched in its effectiveness by a plan suggested in such a book:—

A family traveling abroad numbered among its members a boy of nine years. His mind was quick and sensitive. His father learned one day that the boy had become curious about the realm from which the new babies came, and their pathway hither. The boy asked the direct question, “How do the babies come?” and the father believed that the hour had arrived for a glimpse into the mystery. So he took the boy to a room in the hotel, overlooking lovely Lake Como, and unfolded to him, not all the story, but the mother part of it.

He told the little chap that within the mother his own baby life had begun, and had grown, until he as a baby boy was able to come out into the world, ready to grow up into the boy that he now knew himself to be. And he was told of the mother-love that cherished him, guarded and kept him, through the long months when mother often grew very tired, but never was sorry that she had him to care for.

Then he was told, too, that it was often a time of great danger to the mother when the hour had come for the baby to appear in the world, and that mothers sometimes gave life for the new little life.

Then said the man, “You see now, my boy, why it is that I have always loved my mother so much.” And the lad rose up from his seat over by the window where the lake shone through, and clenching his small hand with emotion, he strode up and down the room, exclaiming with a toss of his fine head, “Oh, father, father, I don’t wonder you feel that way,—I don’t wonder! That’s the most wonderful thing I ever heard!”

It was. And it will seem so to the youngster who is told by any one who is also filled with childlike awe in the presence of this marvel of marvels.

Our own talking with each other is one thing; God’s talking to us is another. Are we making sure that God shall have his opportunity of speaking to the members of the family in the home, apart from their actual Bible reading or prayer time or family worship? We can do this.

One of the long-time leaders of the great Victorious Life Convention that meets every summer at Keswick, England, is the Rev. Prebendary H. W. Webb-Peploe, of London. Years ago he was at a crisis-time in his life. He was agonizing in prayer. He glanced up and saw on the wall a verse of Scripture, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” God spoke to him through that word of God placed on the wall of his room. The young minister saw that he did not need to ask God to make his grace sufficient for him, but that it was, that it is, sufficient. And for years God has been blessing that man to thousands of others as they have been shown through him the complete sufficiency of God’s grace in Christ.

Is God given a share in your home by his Word on the walls of your home? . . .

In the boyhood home of the editor a “silent comforter” was another blessed factor. This is simply a series of sheets of paper, each giving in clear type several carefully chosen Scripture verses. The one referred to contained thirty-one sheets, and each page was turned over from day by day during the month, the day’s verses being read aloud by all in concert at family worship. These passages of Scripture were unconsciously memorized as the months and years went on, and they are among the precious memories and the present riches of the lives of that home today. The “other Comforter” whom Jesus sent when he ascended to his Father can use such a silent comforter in blessed power as through it he talks to the loved ones in the family circle.—Sunday School Times.