“They shall go hindmost with their standards.” Numbers 2:31
Charles Spurgeon said it best, when he said,“Someone must be hindmost in honour and esteem, someone must do menial work for Jesus, and why should not I?”Our oldest home educated daughter recently graduated. “What does she do now?” friends ask. ”Why isn’t she in college?” some want to know. Those questions from well-meaning friends and family and even fellow home educating parents reveal the mindset of a culture that has been fully brainwashed into believing that the only valueable way for a young lady to spend her 4 years after high school graduation, is in college.
Really?
Charles Spurgeon goes on to say of those who go hindmost, “The rear guard is a place of danger. There are foes behind us as well as before us.” Oh how true those words are! Those of us doing this “menial” work for Jesus are the ones being attacked. Beautiful-in-Spirit daughters who stay behind and continue to be trained in the arts of homemaking are the ones with foes all around.
Homemaking is not a work to baulk at, not something that a young woman learns haphazardly if she gets married. Friends, those years after high school (whether public or home schooled) are the ones that truly prepare our daughters for their next role in life. And married or not, all women must be proficient in homemaking skills.
These are the simple facts:
- Someone has to do the laundry and prepare meals
- Someone must do the grocery shopping and pay the bills
- If there are children in the home, they need full time care
Really, it’s the perfect plan! The husband goes out and provides an income for the family and the wife stays home to take care of the house and children. Genius!
Years ago I honestly used to wonder how the family could be improved. “Isn’t here a better way?” I would wonder. It seemed that if the husband and wife were both out working, and there were children to care for, shouldn’t there be some other type of built-in adult in the family? Someone to do all those things that needed to be done, but the working parents simply didn’t have time for?
Yes, there is a better way. God’s way. And menial or not, “women’s work” is just that; women’s work. Someone quite simply must “..be hindmost in honour and esteem, someone must do menial work for Jesus, and why should not I?”
Yes! Why not I? And why not our daughters?
What do you tell others, when in reference to your stay-at-home daughters, ask, “What does she do now? Why isn’t she in college?”
1 comment:
This is excellent for young ladies to remember and meditate on. The world has misled us into thinking we should want something more.
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