Help your family love being home

There is no place on earth like home. Here in our sanctuary, we live out our daily lives and let our hair down, becoming who we really are. And sometimes who we are at home can be anything but who we are in public. We all know how to put on the charm when we are in the presence of others. In fact we often cultivate a public persona: those outside the home and family often see that which we wish to be seen as perfect, affable and socially acceptable. But when we finally get home where it's just our husband and children, we often strip off that persona like a mask and relax our standards. Often this is not attractive.

I believe that of all places the home should be where we strive to be the sweetest and most loving. To our husband and then to our children. How sad it is when we give our best to those outside the home to the detriment and dismay of our family! For home is where we tend and keep vibrant our most precious relationship after Christ: our marriage! Home is where we bear and bring up the blessings of our marriage, our children! What they and your husband see is speaking volumes to them about how they feel being at home.

If home is filled with tension or perpetually in disorder, it will breed an aversion to being there. Often with the mess, untidiness and tension with the screaming of the mother, the crying of the kids, the arguments and so forth, a husband will delay his homecoming because he really isn't all that keen to be there. Home for him is not his castle. He may not even be aware of this avoidance, but I am sure that his wife would be! This can often add to the tension or cause unnecessary problems like alcoholism from too much time with drinking after work, or gambling to wile away the hours until he thinks it may be safe to come home. And yes, these things can happen in a Christian home too!

Children and teens are quick to pick up on tension and will often develop a revulsion to being home, preferring to stay at friends' homes until as long as possible, or delaying coming home from school- even making excuses to be missing. This is tragic because it is avoidable. If a home is reasonably clean and organized, if meals are on time, if there is a sense of peace and relaxation and love, I believe the family will delight to be there. As the wife and as the mother, we do indeed set the temper of the home. We can build our house or we can tear it down with our own hands- it is up to us- we can have it either way.

By taking reasonable steps to be loving wives, mothers, and good homemakers, we can influence how our family relates to their own home. By providing a relaxing, clean environment with care taken to provide nice wholesome and interesting meals, we can foster a love for the home in our family. By trying to promote a sense of peace in the home with minimal arguments and conflicts, we can create a desire to spend time at home. This is important for home is the cradle of civilization and the first meeting place of God.

Don't ever underestimate your influence on your family- you are the heart of the home and the light that lights the path to God through your example. Let's all be someone our family loves to come home to. And let us look afresh at the home and encourage our family to be home with us. The results will be everlasting and will be passed on down the generations.

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

"The curse of the LORD [is] in the house of the wicked: but he blesseth the habitation of the just. " Proverbs 3:33