Another Friday, a day in which our homeschool day begins with soul stretching books. One child is beginning to read Rejoicing in Christ, by Michael Reeves; I for fun and reviewing Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves; and one child is reading a book revised by Karen Andreola, Beautiful Girlhood. We sit around the living room, comfy, enjoying the morning light and bird songs just outside the picture window.
As we read, we stop one another with “listen to this!” moments, or they ask me questions like “What does wooing mean?” We pause our reading, discuss, and get back to our books. When they’ve finished the assigned portion, they narrate (yes, we love Ambleside Online, Charlotte Mason, and everything classical about education).
After college, I found friends with whom I would do just this, and I knew I wanted that in a family one day. I am so thankful that the LORD has given me this! The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. What a beautiful season in life.
So What does Wooing Mean?
This was a fun conversation! Beautiful Girlhood was talking about the Holy Spirit wooing us. The Spirit at work in and around us! When we were dead in our transgressions, we did not “give our hearts to Jesus.” Nor did we “open the present presented to us.” We were wooed, we were drawn by His love and compassion and mercy. He made us alive together with Christ! And with Him has given us every spiritual blessing.
He has drawn us with chords of love. He has loved us with an everlasting love, and pursued us. He calls, and while we do not know “how” yet we know the Spirit was working to regenerate our dead hearts, giving us a heart of flesh where there once was a heart of stone. A heart to know Him, to see Him and recognize in Him everything we’ve ever truly longed for. (all ideas expressed in The letters to the Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, as well as Deuteronomy, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel…)
Titus 3:4 But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, 5 He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs [a]according to the hope of eternal life. 8 This is a trustworthy statement; and concerning these things I want you to speak confidently, so that those who have believed God will be careful to engage in good deeds. These things are good and profitable for men. 9 But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the Law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.
Ethos
What a joy to have the time, the freedom, the space, and the Holy Spirit guiding us as we foster this ethos in our home. Homemaking is so much more than dusting and sweeping and cooking and laundry… Home. This family’s sanctuary, within a world of darkness. A place of belonging and welcoming, of growing, of clinging to Christ together. What a joy to have a husband that works hard to make this happen. It is not easy to do this homemaking thing if we all wake up and scatter, come home many hours later tired-eat a hurried meal and re-scatter, meet up to say “good night” and begin again the next morning…scattered, fragmented, each on seperate paths.
God created family for so much more; God has intentions for family and home that are timeless and unchanging, even if our houses are more modern, and roles are arranged bit different in various culture settings.
What is the ethos of your home, your family? Is it well thought out, and perhaps hanging on the wall? “In this family we…” Is it something you talk of often, so that you all are rooted and grounded together? Rooted and grounded in His eternal Love, and His eternal Truth, together?
Deuteronomy 6 Should Still be the Norm
God has shown us what is good. If you are married, you are to be one with your spouse–not two that occasionally tango, or two that tolerate each other’s presence and occasionally share things and ideas. One–mutual submission, mutual delight, helping and serving and honoring one another, being of one mind so as to worship the One True Living God together, and being fruitful and multiplying. Spiritual fruit, zealous for good deeds (see Titus), and if the LORD wills, the fruit of your loins (to use an archaic phrase), i.e. procreating. And not just having children–but also raising your children up, training them, passing on the faith so that Paul could say to your children as he did to Timothy–that he knows the same faith dwells in your children that dwelt first in you.
If you are a parent, you fellowship with your spouse, and also your children! They are your covenant children. In your home, you are to talk of God and of the faith while we: rise up first thing in the morning, while we sit at home (meals? Bible Study? Connections found in literature? Late night conversations?), we we walk along the way (or drive, because we are not a walking culture; or spend intentional times conversing along the way, like a family hike, or other activity), or while we wind down and go to bed.
His Word beloved, must be in your hearts and on your lips. Your lips should not be without it. He shapes your thoughts as you set your mind on “things of the Spirit”, or your idols do as you set your mind on things of the flesh; and whatever shapes your thoughts will come out in words. Abide in His Words, if you are truly a disciple, and His words, His truth, will set you free from the world’s ever-changing ideas and idols. Will it be His Words that transform you and the ethos of your home?
Practically Speaking
The ethos of your home, the heart of your homemaking, will either be formed by outside influences, or you will intentionally form it. Will you, one day down the road, realize the atmosphere in your home is not what you had hoped, is not glorifying God, but rather fragmented and disordered, set on the temporal things that are passing away? Or will you build your house on the Rock, with intention?
Find ways to read together, hide God’s Word in your heart together, encourage one another, sing together, serve together. Find ways to work toward peace, and being quickly reconciled; learn to outdo one another in showing honor, and above all to honor God in everything.
Stewardship must be taught from a young age, so that all will grow to understand that our time, our resources, our strengths and abilities, our material possessions, our earnings–everything–is from God, and to be used as stewards rather than as owners. Our mentality is more than merely “well, this isn’t eternal, I can’t take it with me, might as well use it/abuse it/waste it however I want.” Am I being faithful toward God with what He has given? Am I honoring Him with my choices? Whose kingdom am I building?
There is no program to make this happen, it is meant to be a family affair, not a rigid ‘how to.’
Proverbs 23:3-4 By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.
2 Peter 3:14 Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, 15 and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, 16 as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. 17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, 18 but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
“Christian Reader, I cannot suppose that you are such a stranger in England as to be ignorant of the general complaint concerning the decay of the power of godliness, and especially of the great corruption of youth…The devil has great spite toward the kingdom of Christ, and he knows no better way to crush it in the egg, than by perversion of youth, and supplanting the family duties. Granted, he strikes at all those public duties in the assemblies of the saints, but they are too well guarded by the solemn injunctions and the dying charge of Jesus Christ as that he could totally subvert and undermine them. But at family duties he strikes with the more success, because the institution is not so solemn, and the practice of family duties is not so seriously and conscientiously regarded.”
Thomas Manton, “Epistle to the Reader of the Westminster Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms” in The Family Worship Book, ed. Terry Johnson (Fearn, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1998), 109.
Persevere, brethren!
Do not neglect the small, faithful, daily, momentary, rhythms; the habits and duties that will let His words delight and refresh your soul and your family, and build fellowship among your family members.
Photo by Ingrid Hall on unsplash