ARE YOUR CHILDREN FINDING MORE ATTRACTIVE PLACES THAN HOME?
By David Paulson
Recently I received a letter from a sister in a far-distant State, containing these words, “For God's and humanity's sake, do look up my daughter in Chicago.” Fortunately, I found that she was earning an honest living in a Christian family; and upon further investigation, I found that it was the same heartrending story over again—a home among strangers actually more congenial than the parental roof. The truth once held merely as a theory had long ago lost its fragrance. Is it possible for the Lord to help us fill our homes with such a sweet aroma that whatever the devil may hold out will seem tame and flat because it lacks this heavenly quality, which the devil has not the power to instate? Some offer as an excuse for their children's drifting away from them that nowadays the devil gets up so many attractions that it is next to impossible to keep the children at home. That is virtually admitting that the devil's counterfeit of one of God's institutions is more winning than the real thing; but that is impossible. The home of every Christian family will become, prior to translation, such a sample of heaven on earth that every one who enters it can decide instantly whether he would feel at home in such an atmosphere through all eternity. In such a home, Mary's box of costly ointment is broken daily, and the house will constantly be filled with its fragrance. The same gospel that will make a heaven by and by, can give us a foretaste of it now. While Christ is making those wonderful mansions for us over yonder, he is equally anxious to let such a degree of his peace hover over our earthly homes that they may become the most wonderful objects of admiration in this sin-cursed world.