| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 10 |
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There are those who are lonely because they are homeless. It is impossible to estimate too highly the value and the helpfulness of a true home of love. Home is a shelter. Young lives nest there and find warmth and protection. There is also guidance in a true Christian home. A wise mother or father answers many of life’s hardest questions. Blessed is that a young man or a young woman who can take every perplexity, every mystery, every doubt or fear, every hunger, home to the sacredness of love’s sanctuary, and who gets there true sympathy, patient counsel, and wise guidance.
Home has also its blessed companionship. It is the one place where we are absolutely sure of each other and do not need to be on our guard. Youth has its unspeakable longings, its deep hungers, and its cravings for tenderness. In the true home these are all met. Those who have such a home do not realize the half it is to them. It is the very shadow of Christ’s wings over their lives, the very cleft of the Rock, and the very bosom of divine love. Life’s loneliness means far less to them while its companionships and its gentle, patient, wise, helpful, nourishing love.
But sometimes the home is pulled down over youth and its shelter broken up. Few things are sadder than homelessness. Loneliness begins to be really felt when the home is gone, when there is no longer a wise and loving mother to give her counsel in life’s inexperience, to lay her hand on the head in benediction, to listen to eager questions and answer them, to restrain the impetuous spirit, to quiet the soul when it is perturbed and when its peace is broken, to lead through perplexing paths, to fill the hungry heart with the comfort of love when it longs for sympathy and companionship. Bitter indeed is the sense of loneliness when a young person, used to all that a mother’s love means, turns away from a mother’s grave to miss thenceforward the blessings that have been so much in the past. Nothing earthly will in any full and adequate measure compensate for the loss. Other human friendships may be very sweet, but they will not give back home, with its shelter, its affection, its trust, its guidance, its soothing, and its security.
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