| Home Making |
Chapter 5 |
Page 13 |
His is not the only case. This noble trait is not so rare as we might think, though it sometimes shines with a lustre so brilliant as to draw all eyes to itself. Life’s history is not all written. Love’s noble deeds are not all wrought in the eyes of the world. Much of the rarest and noblest heroism of love is never seen by human eyes. There are other great men who have shown the same reverence and love for parents in age or feebleness. There are noble daughters too who forego the joys offered to them in homes of their own, refusing offers of marriage and voluntarily choosing to live without its blessing and comfort, that they may shelter in old age and surround with love’s tenderness the father or the mother, or both, who filled their youth with sunshine. Here and there heroism finds its way into record; but the noblest heroisms of life, the tenderest histories of love, the most sacred things wrought by human affection, remain unwritten and untold.
Men talk of the wickedness of this world, and surely it is wicked enough. Sin leaves blackness everywhere. There are horrors of ingratitude, of meanness, of shame, of guilt, which make earth a stench in God’s nostrils. Yet amid all that is so revolting there are records of such sacred tenderness, such holy beauty, such ineffable love that angels must pause over them in reverence. These are fragments of the Eden loveliness that float down upon the dark tide, like lilies pure and white and unsullied on the black waters of some stagnant bog. In earth’s homes where the story of Christ’s love has been told, there are filial devotions that are fair as angelic ministries.
It was on the cross that Jesus paid his last tribute of love and honor to his mother. The nails were in his hands and feet and he hung there in agony. He was dying in deepest shame. The obloquy of the world was pouring its blackest tides upon his head. In the throng below, his eye fell on a little group of loving friends, and among them he saw his mother. Full as his heart was of its own anguish, it was not too full to give thought to her. She would have no protector now. The storms would beat in merciless fury upon her unsheltered head. Besides the bitterness of her bereavement there would be the shame she must endure on his account, the shame of being the mother of one who died on a cross. His heart felt all this, and there, in the midst of his own agony, he made provision for her, preparing a home and shelter for her. Amid the dark scenes of the cross his example shines like a star in the bosom of the blackest clouds, saying to us, “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
Page 13
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