Keepers of the Temple

Dear Kajijis,
Last Friday started out chilly but turned into a beautiful sunny day at the farm for our Kajiji group. We didn’t end up picking apples, but we were able to pick some pumpkins from the pumpkin field. Our discussion was about whether the role of motherhood is fulfilling and what kind of sacrifices are/were made in order to obtain that role. I love the honesty and openness I heard from the group and appreciate the difficulty to feel fulfilled in that role at times. More often than not, I hear about women who are struggling with their role as mothers, not because they are driven to become the highest-paid executive in the company and are trying to balance the demands of work and family, but because they feel they have a calling to minister to others or use their God-given gifts in some way to serve Him and their role as mothers hampers that calling in some way. Do we not all sometimes feel that we could be greater in our calling or more effective in our service for God if only we didn’t have children? Or maybe it’s not our children but us that we find fault in – we should be able to do it all, but we find ourselves falling short of the goal.

Did you know that our roles as mothers are very similarly connected to the Levitical priests’ roles as “keepers of the temple”? Our unique ministry is being the guardian of our home. Mary Farrar in her book Choices (I’ll be quoting her book a lot here) talks about home being our primary focus. “Your home and the people who live there are to be your primary focus, as well as the primary beneficiaries of your energies and gifts.”

“Some women’s gifts and bents lend themselves naturally to the care of the home. But other women have bents that create a great struggle… If you are one of these women, relax and understand that your struggle is normal and natural. The truth is that many women of Scripture would be struggling, too, if they lived in your shoes.
No doubt the Proverbs 31 woman would be faced with some tough choices if she lived in our time. But mark this – please. She would never let her outside ministry and businesses get in the way of the care of her home.

The godly women of Scripture were not gift-enamored. They were God-enamored.
They were not gift-fulfilled. They were God-fulfilled.

Their primary concern was the well-being of their families and the furtherance of God’s kingdom on earth.
This is tough for some of us to swallow. Yet if our homes are to survive the inferno raging about us, we cannot ignore these harder truths or lay them aside. Let’s just face it. There are times when taking God’s priorities as our own priorities will mean that we will lay aside the expression of some of our gifts and training for a season.
But consider this. While you and I are sacrificially meeting the needs of our children and families, God is preparing us, sharpening us, equipping us, deepening us, and re-directing us to use our gifts in ways we could never have foreseen.”1

Mary Farrar talks about Harriet Beecher Stowe and how her role as a mother impacted a nation.
“She had lost a child to infant death the year before she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was her motherly grief that caused her to grieve for all the black mothers who had lost children through slavery and that motivated her to write such a book. Amazingly Stowe was the first American to break the silence on this issue.
It took a woman.
A mother.
Her book made waves worldwide… Upon meeting her during the Civil War, Lincoln remarked, ‘So this is the little woman who made this big war.’
The embracing of biblical motherhood can bring an entire nation to its knees. Sensitize the mothers, and you have sensitized a nation.”

None of these words are meant to guilt you into feeling fulfilled as a mother, but rather to persuade you of the utmost importance of your high calling. Jesus commanded us to “Come, follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” We are fishers of men simply by being mothers, are we not? What greater calling could we have at this stage in our life?

G.K. Chesterton said, “[A mother of young children is] with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t…How can it be an [important] career to tell other people’s children about mathematics, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe?… [A mother’s] function is laborious…not because it is minute, but because it is gigantic.”2

This week’s meeting is up in the air as of right now – I’ll let you know details as soon as possible. Thanks and God bless!


Crystal




1 & 2 From Choices: For Women Who Long to Discover Life’s Best by Mary Farrar