The True Test of Homemaking

I read a beautiful post today about homemaking and thought you might like to read it. It is taken from A Wise Woman Builds Her Home and is titled...


(I've posted from A Wise Woman Builds Her Home before, she has so many great writings, you must check her out)


The True Test of Homemaking

before we can say that we have realized the ideal of a true Christian home, we must prove its spirit. What impression would our home and its like make upon a pure and simple-hearted child?

We may build a palace of marble. We may fill it with the rarest beauties of art. We may adorn it in the most luxurious fashion. We may furnish it in the most costly manner. It may be perfect as a gem in all its appointments, a piece of art in itself. Then our home-life may be as stately as royalty itself. There may be the most perfect order, the loftiest courtesy, the utmost precision of movement. Each member of the family may fulfill his part with unfailing promptitude.

Bring in the child and ask it what it thinks of your home. "It is very beautiful," responds the little one. "It is very grand. It is a palace. Does a king live here?"

You turn away disappointed. You have failed to make such a home as you wished. You have piled up grandeur; you have made a splendid piece of art; you have succeeded in setting up a model which all will admire; but you have not made a home of love, of tenderness, and of praise.

You begin anew. You do not seek this time for grandeur. You build your home with taste and thought. You put into it as many lovely things as you can afford. You set up your household life and fill it with the spirit of prayer, of love, of gentleness, of unselfishness. Again you call the child. She moves up and down, in and out. She sleeps under your roof; she eats at your table; she tastes of your pleasures; she mingles in the life of your household. You ask her what she thinks of your home and she replies, "I think Jesus lives here!"

It is not the grandeur that impresses her now, but the spirit that dwells within; not the stateliness, but the affectionateness, not the courtliness, but the sweetness. She finds love everywhere---love that shows itself in tone, in act, in look, in word and in countless little manifestations of thoughtfulness and unselfish tenderness. It impresses the untaught feeling of the child as a home like that in which the Master would live.

This is the true test of home-making. It matters not how little or how much of grandeur, of luxury, of costly adornment there may be. Money and art can do many things, but they cannot make a home. There may be more of the spirit of a true home in a lowly cottage or in the one room where poverty finds a shelter, than in the stateliest mansion.--

JR Miller, The Family

This is so my prayer today. Life can be overrun with things - dishes, clothes, lists, chores, noise, appointments. That Jesus may shine in our homes!!! What better goal in a homemakers life?