Now that we have sent the new issue of Above Rubies out to everyone on the mailing list in USA, my email box is filled with ladies changing their address, wanting to be added to the mailing list, and some who want to cancel the magazine.
However, I have been sad that many the ladies who cancel say that they have loved receiving Above Rubies over the years, but now they no longer need it because their children have grown up. Comments include: “My children are now grown,” or “I’m done raising children,” etc.
When I read these words, I have to say: “I beg your pardon?” Have these lovely ladies forgotten God’s admonition to the older women to teach the younger women? Yes, I do think it is a forgotten passage of God’s Word, for there are so few older women who take it seriously.
It is true that most women move on to a different stage of life when their children are grown. They leave the home (if they were even there before) and start thinking more and more of their own agenda.
Dear precious ladies, we don’t stop mothering when our children leave the nest. We keep enlarging our mothering. It won’t be long, and grandchildren will come. And these years go so quickly and then another generation begins.
Life as a mother is meant to enlarge, broaden, and unfold more and more into the fulfillment of God’s plan for families. We keep on mothering. Plus we have a new responsibility to encourage and teach the new generation of young mothers.
How do the new generation of mothers know what to do unless the older generation teaches them? It is sad that in many homes today young women grow up not knowing how to cook or run a home. Many of them are unfamiliar with babies. If there were only two children in the family, they haven’t experienced babies around them as they grew up. They are unprepared for mothering and homemaking.
This is not how God intends it to be. He has COMMANDED that the older women teach the young women HOW to love their husbands, HOW to love their children, and HOW to be keepers at home, etc. Read it all in Titus 2:3-5 (JBP). It’s not enough to teach them. They must show them how.
Can I ask: how can they show them how if they leave the home? How can they show them how if they are no longer interested in mothering? I believe that we as older mothers should continue to seek God for His plan for us as women. I continually cry out to God to show me His ways for us as women and I am amazed that after all these years God continues to show me more and more of His beautiful plan in His Word. Sadly, most older women do not even know God’s ways to pass them on to the younger generation.
To teach the new generation, we as older women must continue in the anointing of motherhood. Continuing to mother. Overflowing in it. Immersing ourselves in it. And seekto faithfully and continually teach it to the new generation of mothers.
The Titus 2 passage ends with very strong words. It tells us that if the older women are not faithful to teach the younger women the truths of motherhood, wifehood, and homemaking that the Word of God will be BLASPHEMED! Wow, that’s a strong word. I’m glad the Bible said it and not me or you’d be wanting to throw rocks at me!
Why does God use such a strong word? I believe it is because if mothers do not embrace their role of mothering and the beautiful place of the home God has provided for them to raise their children, they show an opposite picture of God’s ultimate plan. And this is blasphemy t God.
Blessings to you today,
Nancy Campbell
P.S. Older mothers, let’s keep getting Above Rubies and pass it out to the younger generation of mothers. Let’s pass it on to our daughters and daughters-in-law. Let’s keep getting the message out.
CHECK IT OUT
Dear ladies, some of you asked about the Scripture reference to the picture post used above. I love it when you check things out, because that is what I always love to do.
These words of Micah 2:9 are a paraphrase of the meaning of this Scripture. In the King James Version, it says: “The women of my people have ye cast out from their pleasant houses; from their children have ye taken away MY GLORY forever.” God was angry because the women were forced from their homes. Is God angry at the voices of humanism and feminism which coerce and draw women out of their homes where God has placed them? However, God was not only angry that the mothers were taken from their homes. He was angry because the children were taken from their homes! God calls the inheritance of children being raised in the home “my glory.”
I am king James Version lover. However, here are some other translations that help us to understand the full meaning of this Scripture:
HCSB: “You take my blessing from their children forever.”
AMP: “You take away my splendor and blessing forever (by putting them among pagans, away from Me.)” Wow, those are powerful words. God says that when children are taken out of the home to be cared for by pagans who don’t love and worship Him that they are taken away from Him. He wants children to be raised in His presence, in His truth, in the sacred atmosphere in the home of godly parents. How much do we revere God’s Word? I feel the fear of God in my heart when I read these words.
NLT: “And forever stripped their children of all that God would give them.”
NET: “You defraud their children of their prized inheritance.”
In other words, it is the children’s inheritance to be raised in the home. Even more—it is their GLORY! The word “glory,” the word used in the KJV in this Scripture, is “hadar” in the Hebrew and means “splendor, beauty, comeliness, excellency, glory, honor, and majesty.” Meditate on all those meanings as to how God feels about children being raised in the home! It’s powerful.
Hope this gives understanding to you.
Love, Nancy