A Woman's Place

A woman is responsible for guiding and guarding the home. She cannot guard it if she is not free to be home and look after it. God gave her the authority to mind her own business at home and to manage it. 

A woman's place is in the home because there she has freedom.

 Some people assume that a homemaker is just confined to the home and unable to go to and fro freely, but this just is not so. She has much more freedom than any other kind of worker. She is free to go to the market and find high quality food, and to find things for her home that will make it a lovely place to live. She keeps her own schedule according to the needs of her family, and makes her own decisions according to what is best for them.

Visit Here to find out about this lovely 19th century painting

A woman's place is in the home because she has a job to do that does not belong to anyone else.
 Being a home maker is more than cleaning and cooking, although these things are important. She is there for a deeper, spiritual reason, but that does not require that she neglect the cleaning and cooking. Both are wrought together harmoniously. If it were just a matter of good housekeeping, she would not be needed, and any one could be hired to do her job. If it were just a matter of being an advisor, she would miss out on many other fulfilling things that make a home a real home.

A woman is needed at home to put limits on the demands which confront her family. 

Without the woman there to draw the line on spending money,  and busy activities, other people would take advantage of them.  Children need mothers to regulate their activities and their rest. Men need the home to provide a place of good nutrition and lack of stress. Some women become the social secretaries of their homes, appropriately accepting and declining time-c0nsuming activities. Women are needed at home to protect  the health of their husbands by seeing that others do not put stress or extra demands on them.

Cottage and Flower Garden

Time is needed at home for women to devote to spiritual matters:  Caring for a home is one of the most varied and interesting things in the world, and it is easy to get totally absorbed in it. 

 Seasoned homemakers will tell you that they never get caught up on their housework. Therefore it is important to put aside some time each day to meditate and  pray and and settle your mind. Anyone can mechanically keep house, but a woman who has prepared her mind, spiritually, can do it with a greater purpose: to bring her and her family closer to God.

The word of God is called a seed. It has to be planted in the mind and allowed to germinate. A woman who feeds on the word of God will be able to recall what she has read when she is confronted with problems regarding the guiding of the home.  Without this time of meditation and prayer, her job can become material and mechanical.  She needs to set aside some time with her Bible, a pretty notebook, a nice pen, and a hymn book.  It is a good time to get her thoughts together and list a few desires of her heart and pray about them.This time is her own personal worship service, when she dedicates her service to God.  It will make a big difference between a house that is merely cleaned and a house that is cared for.  This will have a big effect on the neighbors and friends who observe her quiet and busy way of life and bring more glory to God.

A woman's place is in the home so that she can teach her children to be refined and respectful. 

(The Reading, by S.Wilson)

 This simply cannot be accomplished fully if her children are in institutions during the most receptive momments of the day, in classrooms that do not uphold the faiths of the families.  As our nation slips into communism and we lose the things that we have worked for, the only things that will make life tolerable are refinement and respect. They alone are things that have to be taught rather than bought.  Women at home can provide these teachings, by insisting on respect and honor for parents, and decent behaviour in the home. Children need to learn to value the things their parents believe in and respect their family traditions. Colleges and workplaces will not provide this. Women belong at home with their families because of the influence they can wield. That is perhaps one reason there is such a resistance to women staying at home.

                                                     

Visit Here to learn more about this lovely painting of the 1800s.

(painting by Helen Allingham)

A woman's place is in the home because there, she does not have to buy everything. She can make things and make do with things. She can preserve what she has rather than constantly replacing it. I know women who can repair their own appliances, fix broken furniture, grow their own food, and sew their own clothes.  They learn every available remedy for children's coughs and bee stings, and figure out how to cut their husbands and children's hair at home. They lose their dependence on spending money for everything. At home, they can wear what they like and not worry about what everyone else thinks. I have seen beautiful blogs where women at home have designed their own clothing and hairstyles and set themselves apart from the prevailing culture. Without spending money, I believe women can be more creative and successful at home.

A woman's place is in the home, to provide hospitality. The fanciest hotels and restaurants, cannot provide the warmth and comfort to widows and lonely people that hospitality in the home can.  Just a hot cup of tea and a piece of toast served graciously in a home especially prepared for guest, provides a greater balm than any social program.  Hospitality is something markedly obvious in the Bible, from Abraham's welcome to strangers, to Lydia's invitation to the apostle Paul (Acts 16:14). 

(Tea Time by Stephen Darbishire)

 Imagine the person enduring a personal crisis just looking for some kind of relief. It is a shame that they turn to this worlds solutions, when only a small extension of hospitality will work wonders.  Women need to be home to be available for any kind of emergency call. It is discouraging to young women when they are looking for encouragement and knowledge, to find all those women absent from their homes because they answered the call to go to work. The Bible gives women a place and gives it to them alone: to guard and guide and keep the home. The world has no  business convincing them to abandon it.
                                                                                     
A woman's place is in the home so that men can be providers and  have a real home to come home to.  When women go to work, they are saying that they have no confidence in their husbands as providers. Unmarried women should try to keep good relations with their parents so that they can be useful at home until they marry and go into their own homes.  When husbands send their wives to work, it is unbliblical and they are taking authority where God has already commanded.  When they demand that women go to work outside the home, they are saying that they have no confidence in them as home keepers, and they are showing they do not believe that God's plan is good enough. 

 Home management skills come with practice, and women need to learn as they go, and grow into good housekeepers. They cannot do that if they are driven from their homes, and forced to work for others. They are wasting their housekeeping and nurturing skills in the workplace, and they are losing a great deal of time that they need to develop into good homemakers.

A woman's place is in the home because it is where she will be under the least pressure to conform to the standards of the prevailing culture. She is accepted for her inner beauty and she encourages her husband and children to respect her and her work.  No one can possibly keep up with feminisms demands to achieve and accomplish so much in the corporate world. No one can keep up with the fashions or the youth oriented culture. Home is where she can have dignity without pressure, just because that is where she belongs ad that is where she reigns.

A woman's place is in the home, because that is where her greatest authority is.  No other place can provide this place of honour and responsibility, where her  influence  and her works will be passed down to others for generations.

God knew what He was doing when he wrote that women should be workers at home, because women have the greatest power in the home. She can manage an entire family and make the workplace to suit herself. She often looks after elderly grandparents while she is training her own children. From home, she reaches her hands out to anyone in need. She develops skills and talents. Her children are taught manners and refinement. Her husband depends on her in many ways.

A Woman's Place is Her Home.  It belongs to her and no one else. When we say a woman's place is the home, it is because of God's word, not because we invented the idea. I mentioned Titus 2 in the New Testament, but there is also Ist Timothy 5:11-15.  Younger widows are also younger women, and both have the same problems if they do not align their lives to these scriptures.  The Old Testament shows Sarah entertaining strangers at almost a moments notice. Her kingdom was her home.  Proverbs 31 has lately been made into a mandate for real estate agents, but in reality, it shows the woman in charge of the home and the family.