Look with me, if you will, in the Old Testament to the book of 1 Samuel and I want to share with you what I see to be here a profile of a godly mother named Hannah. I think it’s been at least three or four years ago that I taught a special message on this particular woman in a Sunday-morning service on a Mother’s Day and the message had such great impact that as I was thinking about it and talking with my wife, Patricia, about it, we both agreed that it would be well if could refresh our minds regarding this very, very lovely and special person Hannah for she presents to us the pattern of a godly mother. And we’re not going to take the time to develop all that’s potentially here in the text, but at least to touch the surface of some very, very important things.
Obviously I’m very concerned about what’s happening to the American family today. As I shared with you some months ago in our study in Ephesians, it’s shocking to me to think that only seven percent…that’s seven percent…of the people of the United States live in a traditional family with a breadwinner father and a homemaker mother. And it’s really shocking.
Just recently the White House Conference on the Family changed its name. They changed the name to the White House Conference on the Families because they didn’t want anybody to assume that they thought there was only one kind of family with a male father and a female mother. Shocking.
I mentioned this morning that I spent the week with Dr. Basil Jackson and I did, he’s a psychiatrist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and he said this to me, he said, “A child will never come to full psychological development and maturation in adulthood unless that child has had a mother in the home.” That’s a pretty strong statement for a psychiatrist to make. It’s utterly essential to the life of a child that it have a mother in the home, that there be a right perspective in the home.
But we know the home is falling apart. A recent article along the line of what’s happening with weddings says, “In many weddings `so long as we both shall live’ has been replaced by `so long as we both shall love.’ Many couples feel that the latter statement is more realistic.” Says an Episcopalian minister from Akron, Ohio, “Kids 19, 20, 21 are not willing to make the commitment `until death do us part.’ They’re not thinking about their silver or golden anniversary. What they want to be doing now is more important to them than what’s going to happen forty years from now and so they want to substitute `as long as we both shall love.’”
People are going into marriage anticipating that they’re going to want to get out. Parents have shirked the responsibility of the home. Last month in the Rochester Times Union Newspaper there was this article: “When the winter…when the victims of the winter are finally identified the list will go far beyond the owners of ski resorts, salt spreaders and snow plows. Somewhere near the top will be working mothers and their children, especially their children. Mothers and some fathers who have jobs or inflexible commitments outside the home have faced the quandary, almost a panic, about what to do when their children get sick. Inflation has parents talking survival and they maintain that their children will just have to understand that their jobs come first, even if the child is ill. It’s really a problem, one mother admitted to me, my job is important to me and the family has gotten used to the extra income. My husband has a very high power job and I can’t expect him to take time off, but I can’t either. I am competing with people who don’t have the same responsibility and so I hate to say it, but more often than not I send the kids off to school even if they are sick.
“The number of sick children in school has created anxiety. The mother gets anxious at work if their child is ill at school or at home alone and they feel anxious when they stay home because they worry about the job. If they take their sick days for the benefit of their sick children, then they have to go to work when they get sick. From the child’s perspective the choice is no better, either he drags through the day at school sick, or faces the loneliness at home.”
The suggestion of the article is, “That we could have a Baby-Sitting Bank managed by an agency such as a charity or a church. It would consist of men and women available for sitting with children in such an emergency like substitute teachers.”
Now this has become such a problem in one school that they have sent a letter home defining the symptoms that are unacceptable in the classroom. The message is loud and clear, schools don’t want children to come in if they belong in bed. But what is happening to the children who must stay home? Apparently more and more parents are leaving their sick elementary school children home unattended. “`I personally know,’ says the writer of eight, nine and ten-year-olds and have heard of some as young as seven, `who are left at home alone until 3:30 or 4 when a baby sitter arrives or an older brother or sister comes home from school. For the major part of the day these children are quite literally nursing themselves back to health all alone.’ `You probably think it’s terrible,’ a recent divorcee told me with a shrug, `but I have no choice but to leave my son home by himself, I can’t get any help. I did stay home a couple of days and people at work were quite understanding but now I sense my boss’s patience is running out and I just can’t jeopardize my job.’
“The women I talk with are not happy about these arrangements. They tell me they feel anxious.” I hope so. And then the suggestion comes that what we need to do is get a “rent- a-granny, rent-a-nanny, rent-a-parent…whatever you want to call it, and a mother with a sick child can call a central number, describe her problem and for a fee they would send out a rent-a- granny. “It would certainly not benefit…rather, it would certainly benefit not only the contagious classroom, but the sick child who needs warm, reassuring company.”
Who’s under the illusion that somebody called a “rent-a- granny” is going to give warm, reassuring company? But it points up the fact that we are facing an incredible time in our society when children are fast moving down the priority list. This is the curse of our society and with a White House conference on the family coming up, there’s going to be another devastating blow at the family. They’re filling up the conference attendees with homosexuals just by the boat load, incredible numbers of them, advocating the…that the real family is not the only kind of family that families can be any kinds of people who choose to live in a house in any kind of way. It’s a tragic and sad thing.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
