Busy at Home
Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
Titus 2:3-5
I can remember years ago when I was teaching from the Book of Matthew two young mothers came to me feeling convicted. They wanted to confess and then talk about how to manage the amount of time they were spending on their computers. They were feeling guilty that they were allowing their children to play and watch TV somewhat unattended while they sat on their social networks or played games. This was at least ten years ago.
This particular problem has only worsened. The symptoms may be different but the problem isn’t new. The book of Titus, written mid-first century, was already saying that women need to be taught to be busy at home. Some have had mothers who taught them to be so busy at home that “no fun allowed” was and is the message the next generation receives.
I have often thought about the instructions in Titus 2:3-5 because I have a passion for and about the older woman mentoring the younger woman. I have done studies with other women that concentrate on teaching them to love their husbands and their children. We have done chapters of books on hospitality and purity. Submission and self-control are areas I study because I just keep failing at them. But, I rarely concern myself with being busy at home (NIV) or working at home (ESV).
Somewhere between the woman who is so obsessive compulsive that no dust ever rests in her home to the woman who refuses to clean so that her family lives in borderline chaos and squalor, there is a balance. Has anyone taught us to find it and keep it? Being busy at home is listed right up there with love your children and love your husband. It must be important.
In a lesson on self-control several years ago, someone taught me that if we would be disciplined in the little things, discipline in the bigger things would follow. As examples they used going through the mail when it comes and immediately throwing away what is trash and filing the bills – everyday – so that you don’t grow piles of trash and you never lose a bill and get behind on a payment. I have done this for years – it works. Sometimes I get lazy and the bills sit in the dining room for a day or two, but not for long.
Another friend taught me that she gets rid of clothing that doesn’t fit and she refuses to take in “hand me downs” for her children that she knows they won’t use. She avoids the clutter. When clothing is offered she goes through it and takes what she will use and gives the rest back- immediately! This takes great discipline to tell someone, “Thank you for these, I don’t even take the extra things into my house.”
My own mother taught me, though it was a long time before I ever practiced it, to stop and pick up every piece of paper I drop or onion skin that falls to the floor or trash that misses the can when I toss it or clothing that lands next to the hamper rather than in it. Stop, pick it up, and put it where it belongs. You will not be late for anything, it takes a fraction of a second to do most of that if we do it immediately.
Are we cooking for our families? Are we seasonally going through their clothes with them so we know what they have and what they need? Is there so much clutter in our homes that nothing seems organized or in order? Do we treat our children as the family slaves or are they witnessing what it means to be a woman who is busy at home? Are our homes piled with clutter because we have spent more time on the computer and social networks than we have “being busy at home?” Is the next generation getting a clear picture that busy means “on the computer” or “on the phone?”
What needs to be done in your home and my home? Do you and I need to busier than we are at home?