Four Walls Do Not Make A Home

Four Walls Do Not Make A Home
J.R. Miller

—though it is a palace filled with all the elegance's which wealth can buy! The home-life itself is more important than the house and its adornments. By the home-life, is meant the happy art of living together in tender love. We enter some homes, and they are full of sweetness—as fields of summer flowers are full of fragrance. All is order, beauty, gentleness and peace. We enter other homes, where we find jarring, selfishness, harshness and disorder. This difference is not accidental. They are influences at work in each home, which yield just the result we see in each. No home-life can ever be better than the life of those who make it.

Homes are the real schools in which men and women are trained
—and fathers and mothers are the real teachers and builders of life!

Sadly, the goal which most parents have for their home—is to have as good and showy a house as they can afford, furnished in as rich a style as their means will warrant, and then to live in it as comfortably as they are able, without too much exertion or self-denial.

But the true idea of a Christian home, is that it is a place for spiritual growth. It is a place for the parents themselves to grow—to grow into beauty of character, to grow in spiritual refinement, in knowledge, in strength, in wisdom, in patience, gentleness, kindliness, and all the Christian graces and virtues. It is a place for children to grow—to grow into physical vigor and health, and to be trained in all that shall make them true and noble men and women.

A true home is set up and all its life ordered—for the definite purpose of training, building up and sending our human lives fashioned into Christlike symmetry, filled with lofty impulses and aspirations, governed by principles of rectitude and honor, and fitted to enter upon the duties and struggles of life with spiritual wisdom and strength.

>>>>>

There is so much to glean from this small book excerpt.  I so desire to have a home like that, and there are days when I think "Yes! We have this! The peace, serenity, joyfulness..."  Then...the children get up from their naps, or I didn't get enough sleep myself.

If you are like me you have great days, and not so great.  We will not be perfect all the time, but we can strive to give our all, all the time.  I look at it this way... it is the whole, not the little slivers, that count.

We will hit many bumps in the road, but how was the journey? Did we finish our course?

Giving our all for our husbands, our children, and our Lord - everyday.  He doesn't expect perfection, just a willing spirit.  I know you have it,  I know you are willing.  Stop beating yourself up over your failures, and rejoice in the victories!

Home picture is from the Graphics Fairy.