p. 466 | TIED AT HOME

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 21, 1880

TIED AT HOME.

Many a weary mother, with little ones clinging around her, has sighed to think she was so "tied at home." With the restlessness common to humanity, with a desire to hear and know and enjoy what is going on outside of her little circle, she finds her wings clipped, and herself year after year confined to the narrow circle which she calls home. Often too, her toils seem not appreciated, and her sacrifices seem poorly rewarded, and sometimes there are few rays of sunshine on her weary, lonely path.

There are several things to be considered in making up an estimate of the case. And first, the home life is, under God, the foundation of everything worth having in this world. Blot out the home, and with it goes religion, morality, liberty, order, peace. The healthful and orderly existence of the human race, depends on the maintenance of the family life. The woman who holds this fort may think she is doing but little good, but neither she nor any other mortal knows how much evil she is preventing. The little boy who stood wet and dripping all the night long, stopping with his chilled body the opening in a breaking dyke, and thus saving the whole country from a deluge which threatened to overwhelm it, was not more heroic nor more useful in that supreme moment of his life, than the woman who opposes the bulwark of home against all the surging madnesses that rock and toss the world, and who gathers within it those that under her kindly guidance grow up to be an honor and a blessing to the race, but who for her care and the sheltering refuge which her loving hands prepare, would be turned forth as wild beasts to devour society and to destroy each other.

The mother thinks sometimes as she muses on her weary lot, that another mother has done the very same things for her. Her memory goes back to the time when she was a clinging child; when hands that are now crossed in death's slumber toiled to care for her; and when a heart that now is silent in the grave, throbbed with love and thrilled with anxiety for the brood of little ones of whom she was one. She is doing for others only what others have done for her, and as she blesses the memory of those who have shielded her in her early days, so she labors with renewed zeal so to perform a mother's duty that her children shall arise and call her blessed at the last.

She who feels the bondage of home, nevertheless cannot fail to rejoice in its safety. The gay butterflies of fashion flit on every breeze, but the wintry blasts find them without a shelter. There are dangers away from home; there are phantoms that lure and snares that entangle; there are sins and woes unnumbered that lie in wait for those who cut loose from wise restraints; but the mother, in her quiet home life with her little ones around her, has her heart steadied in its supreme affections and desires, and feels a nearness to that Christ who blessed the little children, and who shelters those who trust in him from every foe and snare.

We may chafe at the confinement of home, but what of those who have no home, drifting on the wide world, waifs upon a stormy sea, lost children in a desert land? To be without a home is next to being without hope and without God. The true mother has her home, and what is more she expects to have it; for when her hands have grown weak, the little ones which she clasps will have grown strong; when her steps shall falter, theirs shall tread firmly; when she can no longer guide the erring and support the helpless, they who have grown wise beneath her teaching, and strong beneath her nurture, shall bear her up amid the sorrows of life's closing hours and lead her gently to her rest in peace.

O, mother, thank God for a home, and remember though it may not have beauty, it need not be void of blessings. That which makes home holy makes home happy; and though the cot be humble and the roof be low; though there be in it no pomp nor splendor, though it may not echo with the witchery of music or shine with the adornments of art, yet if there be tender love and unfailing kindness, and faith and zeal and fellowship with God, then shall the home, hallowed by such influence, and crowned with the divine blessing, be sacred in the sight of God and angels, and ever sacred in the memory of those who there abide. The years may come and go, the little feet may walk their weary paths on distant shores, but however scattered abroad, whether tossed upon the waters or wandering upon the land, the sweet influences of home shall never be forgotten; and there shall come from day to day to the heart of your boy or your girl the recollection of a mother's love, the memories of the twilight hours of prayer, the remembrances of sacred communion with God, and the solemn utterances of his word repeated by maternal lips; and these shall weave around their wayward hearts bonds that earth can never break, and shall link them in all their wanderings to mother and home, and through these, draw them gently toward that home where sorrows shall not enter and whence joys shall not depart.—The Christian.