Life is what you come home to and if everything is right there, everything can be wrong out in the world and a man will still feel blessed. Conversely, if everything out in the world is going well, but a man's home is a cesspool of bitterness and belligerence, nothing will feel quite right.
Women were made to make home. A foolish woman tears down her own house, but a wise woman builds it up and it becomes the kind of place everyone wants to be and look s forward to coming back to. It also prepares those within it well for the work they must do outside its walls. The home is not jealous of the work that needs to be done outside its walls, it is zealous to help those called to the fields.
“I think I can understand that feeling about a housewife’s work being like that of Sisyphus (who was the stone rolling gentleman). But it is surely, in reality, the most important work in the world. What do ships, railways, mines, cars, government etc exist for except that people may be fed, warmed, and safe in their own homes? As Dr. Johnson said, ‘To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavour’. (1st to be happy, to prepare for being happy in our own real Home hereafter: 2nd, in the meantime, to be happy in our houses.) We wage war in order to have peace, we work in order to have leisure, we produce food in order to eat it. So your job is the one for which all others exist.” — C.S. Lewis
Men go out to fight for their homes. They risk the discomfort of trenches for the comfort of family table. They go out into the cold for the love of the warmth they leave behind to defend. A man will lay his life down on a foreign field in order to give his people a fighting chance to survive back in the homeland.
Nehemiah 4:14
And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.
The home is the building block of society. If you want to fight the darkness, the place is to begin at home. Love your wife. Teach your children. Build a life together. Make something so precious that you would be willing to fight for it if it came to that. The home is the first battle front. If you lose that, the only motivation you have to go out to war is the hatred of your enemies and as Chesterton reminded us, "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."
The home, then, is the domestic theater of the war. Do not go AWOL. Get to work.
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