| Home Making |
Chapter 7 |
Page 13 |
God wants us to fill our homes with happiness. He made childhood joyous, full of life, bubbling over with laughter, playful, bright and sunny. It is a crime to repress the mirth and the gladness and to try to make children grave and stately. Life’s burdens will come soon enough to lie upon their shoulders. Life will soon enough bring care and anxiety and hardship and a weight of responsibility. We should let them be young and free from care just as long as possible. We should put into their childhood days just as much sunshine and gladness, just as much cheerful pleasure, as possible. Besides, the way also to make them strong and noble in character when they grow up to manhood and womanhood is to make their childhood and youth bright and happy. If you want to produce a vigorous, healthy plant, you will not bring it up in a dark room; you will give it all the sunshine it will take. Human lives will never grow into their best in gloom. Pour the sunshine about them in youth; let them be happy; encourage all innocent joy; provide pleasant games for them; romp and play with them; be a child again among them. Then God’s blessing will come upon your home, and your children will grow up sunny hearted, gentle, affectionate, joyous themselves and joy bearers to the world.
When MacMahon returned victorious from the battle of Magenta all Paris came out to welcome him. Many were the honors heaped upon the brave, bronzed soldier. As he was passing in triumph through the streets and boulevards a little child ran out toward him with a bunch of flowers in her hand. He stooped down and lifted her up before him, and she stood there, her arms twining about his neck, as he rode on. This simple exhibition of gentleness toward a little child pleased the people more, and seemed a more beautiful act in their eyes for a moment, than all the memory of his heroic deeds on the battlefield. Men are greatest and best, not when they are wrestling with the world, not when the are putting forth the startling qualities of power, not when they are playing the hero in great contests, but when they are exhibiting most of the spirit of a little child. No parent therefore should ever be ashamed to romp and play with his children. Perhaps he is nearer to God then than when doing what he deems his grandest work in the world. Perhaps the angels applaud more then than when he is performing deeds that bring him praise or fame; and it is better to have fame among the angels than a dozen worlds.
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