If I could be given the power to command, to force, to require, then I would demand of God’s people and other people of America, good homes. I do not speak now of houses— whether they be shacks by the side of the road or mansions on a hill. But I speak of homes—family circumstances and associations. And since it is impossible to enforce a command for good homes, I must beg, plead, and exhort.
I plead for homes where there is love, peace, tranquility, serenity, and hope. I plead for homes where there is unity, mutual respect, morality, happiness, and optimistic enthusiasm. I plead for homes were hatred, malice, bitterness, selfishness, and vengeance are excluded. I plead for homes where dope, wine, beer, whiskey, divorce, fornication, adultery, and profanity are totally absent.
I prayed for homes as God intended for them to be – the cradle of civilization, the bulwark of the church and the vestibule of heaven. And I do not plead for the impossible, but for the kind of homes that we can indeed have – if we will. Perhaps less emphasis should be put upon up-to-date ways and means of having good homes, and more emphasis is needed upon commitment, dedication, determination, desire, devotion and responsibility, for if we have these qualities, we will usually find the ways and means for success.
A Wounded Land
The Lord said to Solomon, “If my people which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins, and will heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14). And, oh, today our land needs healing! Ours is a sick society, a troubled nation, a wounded land! And in the midst of all this, God’s churches suffer, for the churches are people, and people represent homes, and too many homes are not good homes.
The nation and the churches are both wounded by permissive parents, by doting grandparents, and by liberal teachers who fill tender minds with humanistic trash. We, as a people, are wounded by disobedient children and by rebellious youth. We are wounded by disregard for marriage, by unconcern for chastity, by broken families, and by promiscuousness, and by amorality among adolescents, teenagers, and adults.
Is There No Healing Balm?
When Jeremiah observed “the graven images in the strange vanities” of God’s people, he cried out, “The harvest is passed, the summer is ended, and we are not saved… is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?” Indeed, Jeremiah knew and the people knew that God’s Word and God’s ways would heal the land. His question was rhetorical. He was appealing to them to return to God’s will and way. Today I cannot appeal to the nation we call America for I have no sufficient voice to reach the nation. But today I appeal to those of God’s people who may hear me. God will hear our prayers, he will bless his people, he will make us a great and shining light in the world when the sound words we hear from our pulpits are applied in our homes, demonstrated in our lives, and exemplified by husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters.
God may heal our land and bless His church today if His people will commit themselves to “family righteousness.” The fable is told that when a chasm opened in the Forum of Rome, it was said by the Oracles that whatever was most precious in Rome must go into the chasm to close it. And a soldier, with his armor and mounted on his horse, spurred the horse into the chasm after which act of valor the conscience of the earth closed over him. In 1861, in a speech in the Senate, Timothy Hall of Wisconsin, typified Abraham Lincoln as plunging himself into the dark chasm that was about to destroy the nation. Today a vast and deep chasm may be about to engulf the land and the churches. It is for us, as Christians, to exhibit the courage and fidelity that will bring reformation – that will close the chasm—by producing the good homes that will be the cradle of civilization, the bulwark of the church, and the vestibule of heaven.
This article was first appeared in Think, Vol. 13, No.1, dated Jan-Feb-Mar, 1982