| The Way of Victory |
Chapter 5 |
Page 5 |
Again, “She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.” This is a beautiful trait in her. A woman without a kindly heart and a gentle hand is not the sort of woman God wants. This model wife does not live only for herself alone, nor does she confine all her thought and care and toil to her own home. She does not neglect her own household in order to do good outside. It has been sometimes hinted of certain good women that they were so busy attending missionary meetings or temperance meetings, or looking after orphans or the poor, that their own husbands and homes and children had but scant attention. Perhaps this is not a just charge. At least it could never be true of such a wife as the one described in this passage. On the other hand, however, there have been women who lived so unselfishly and so exclusively for their own that they never had any thought or time or help for any human being outside. This is almost as imperfect a life as the other. Every woman should seek to make her home a centre of light and joy and blessing, not only to all who come within her doors, but to the needy, the sorrowing, the suffering outside. One of the noblest opportunities of usefulness and helpfulness given to anyone in this world is that which a well-prepared woman finds in her home. She can make it a place of warmth and cheer. She can open her doors to her neighbours and friends with the charm of hospitality. She can let the light shine out through her windows to shed its beams outside. She can send out help from her doors in many ways. Then she can make her home a centre of gentle and kindly influences which will roll near and far.
Further, this woman “is not afraid of the snow for her household.” She provides well in summer for the exigencies and needs of any possible winter. She does not wait until the cold and the storms come before thinking of warm winter garments for her household. There are mothers who do this, but this woman has everything ready in advance. There is a good lesson here for everybody. The rule to lay up in summer for the needs of winter applies in a thousand ways. Youth is a summer-time, when in school and home boys and girls should lay up health and knowledge and wisdom for the days of toil, temptation, care, and duty in the after years. It is well for all to begin life on the principle of laying away in store every year something of the year’s earnings or income. This is the only way ever to accumulate anything, or to have anything to fall back on in the “rainy day” that is sure some time to come to everyone. The young should seek also to make friends in their youth, so that when the stresses of life come and they need sympathy and help they will not stand alone. In the time when they are sheltered in their homes young people should gather strength into their life-firm principles, sturdy convictions, habits of doing right and of resisting wrong and sin. Then when they go out into the world, to face life’s winter, with its duties, struggles, burdens, temptations, sorrows, they will be ready and will not fail.
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