When my dad was a young man, he once went to pick up a young lady for a date, and while he waited for her, her mother hauled out her daughter’s hope chest to show my dad how much loot she had. Far from impressing him, had she been trying her best to scare him off, she could not have done anything that would have worked quite so well.
Though we don’t have the same culture-wide tradition of the hope chest anymore, the principle of a young woman gathering up stuff that will come in handy later is a really wise idea. (It just shouldn’t be used to impress the guys!) When my younger daughter was in college, she began accumulating quite a load of things for her future kitchen. She bought herself a big, beautiful, red kitchen aid mixer with the proceeds of a catering event, and she collected vintage tablecloths and aprons, and lots of kitchen gadgets. At one point I remember her saying something like, “I don’t have a hope chest. I have a presumption chest!” But she enjoyed using her pasta maker and her collection of cookboots, etc. while she was still living with us. Continue reading ‘The Presumption Chest’
Archive for the 'Domesticity' Category
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This is a pep talk I gave somewhere about how God takes the tasks that we do (as we offer them up to Him), no matter how mundane they may seem to us, and He uses them to transform the culture around us.
Women often give themselves a poor job description. This happens all the time. (“I’m just a stay-at-home mom. Excuse me for living.”) But God has given us good work to do and we should realize how much He values it and how effective it really is.
Scripture tells women to adorn themselves in good works (1 Tim. 2:9-10). A couple Continue reading ‘Give Yourself a Good Job Description’
Here is a lovely virtue that women are designed for. It isn’t in found in a list of virtues like some of the others we have discussed, but women are charged to be domestic, to be capable homemakers.
Domestic means simply, home-loving; enjoying household affairs; a devotion to home and family life.
Domesticity encompasses everything that has to do with managing a home.Women need to be trained to be domestic, just like they might be trained for any other job. Though women are designed for this, it does not follow that we know everything instinctively. It is a calling, not a hobby. The older women are to teach the younger women to be homemakers (Titus 2:4). That word maker is an important one. God is our Maker and He has given us the great privilege of making things in imitation of Him, whether it is a poem or a home. Women are given a glorious responsibility in homemaking.
Homekeeping refers to the nuts and bolts of managing a home, and homemaking has Continue reading ‘Home-Loving’
As we seek to establish a robust Christian culture in our homes, we cannot forget the impact beauty has on our souls and on those around us. Barrenness is not what we are shooting for, and yet many Christian homes are barren: colorless, bleak, gloomy, and stale. Is this what we want to export? Is this a sample of reformed living? I have been in Christian homes where the blinds were drawn tight, where the only items in view were simply utilitarian and mostly ugly, where the sunshine was shut out, and the thermostat was turned down so low that not only was it dreary, it was cold too. All I could think of was, Continue reading ‘Beauty in the Home’
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