Susan Schaeffer Macaulay - For the Familys Sake: The Value of Home in Everyones Life

For the Familys Sake

Crossway Books
by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay
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For the Childrens Sake
For the Familys Sake

For the Familys Sake

Copyright 1999 by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

Published by Crossway Books
a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Cover design: David LaPlaca

Cover illustration: Debra Chabrian

First printing 1999

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture taken from The Holy Bible: New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

The NIV and New International Version trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

Scripture verses marked PHILLIPS are from The New Testament in Modern English, translated by J. B. Phillips 1972 by J. B. Phillips. Published by Macmillan.

Scripture references marked KJV are taken from the King James Version.

Scripture verses marked AMP are from the Amplified Bible. Old Testament copyright 1965, 1987 by the Zondervan Corporation. The Amplified New Testament copyright 1958, 1987 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Every effort has been made to contact owners of copyrighted material quoted in this book and to secure permission.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Macaulay, Susan Schaeffer
For the familys sake : the value of home in everyones life /
Susan Schaeffer Macaulay.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 13: 978-1-58134-111-9 (alk. paper)
ISBN 10: 1-58134-111-3
1. HomeReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.
BR115.H56M33 1999
248.4dc21 99-33107

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VP 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5

This book is
dedicated , with thanks
to the Lord
and with love ,
to Philip and Abigail.

CONTENTS

Without the work of Elaine Cooper, my friend and the administrator of Child Light, this book would not have been possible. We all thank you.

Thank you also to my husband, Ranald, to my children, and to my grandchildren for their support and encouragement at a personal cost to themselves.

Thanks to LAbri Fellowship, which has allowed me to devote so much time to writing.

Thanks to the members of the Charlotte Mason College Association, who welcomed Elaine and me to their reunion in Ambleside. We appreciate their generous friendship and the many conversations with us that helped us to understand their student experience at Scale How and the Parents National Education Union (PNEU) schools they taught in during their professional careers.

Thanks to Miss Eve Anderson for the generous gift of her time and energies in helping us all as we seek to apply the PNEU ideas in homes and schools today.

Thanks to Phil Matthews for the hours spent telling me about Amy Carmichael and Dohnavur and also to Margaret Wilkinson for the long telephone conversations and the loan of letters. Thanks to the Dohnavur Fellowship office and Jean van der Flier for her help.

I thank my mother and my father for my early childhood and for so much more than could ever go into a book. Thank you, Nancy Barker, for my beloved Sunday school class when I was four and five years old. Her teaching forged for me a lifelong link with the Bible.

This is a book about life at home. Just as the use of the word homemaker has fallen into an uneasy past, the concept of having time for rich home life is also being relegated to history. Im referring to a time when friends would congregate in threes or fours on front porches to laugh and chat while children played outside in the twilight, when neighbors knew each other and would pause to exchange words and events over the back fence.

HOME. Do we have to give it all up? We, whoever we arethe unmarried professional, the single person devoted to a vocation teaching inner-city children, the parent left alone to bring up children, the widow wondering how to go on and make a life that still has shape and meaning, the elderly person making decisions about everyday life patterns, the postgraduate student facing several stressed-out years, the Christian worker with never a spare moment, parents of all sorts and in different circumstanceswe all need a fresh look at what we are aiming for at home.

Women ask whether it is worthwhile to give generous time and energy to the home. Is it necessary? And what should the home look like? Is it possible to find a map that shows? Can we see a stabilizing infrastructure that will clarify our priorities as we wade through details?

What do the most vulnerable of persons, little children, need? In our real-life circumstances, how can we give them a satisfying childhood? What does that look like?

This book will address these questions and more. Of course, because human life is anything but obvious, getting to the answers takes some telling! The questions are like icebergs floating in a deep sea. To give worthwhile answers, you have to look deeper than the obvious. Is there a big picture beyond the details, a reality below lifes surface? Christian believers think so. If the Judeo-Christian Scriptures are reliable, they offer a view of our lives that explains matters and directs us. Hopefully, we can discover a balance in our practical lives that is life-giving and works well. For hundreds of years people have found life-giving ideas this way.

In a short book like this, the big view can only be sketched briefly. Many questions cant be answered. There is an appendix at the end of the book with suggestions for further reading and a list of addresses that may be useful to you. There youll also find a short description of people and organizations mentioned in the book Charlotte Mason, Amy Carmichael, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, and LAbri Fellowship.

1
Who Needs a Home?

If you were to stop and ask a miserable refugee, Who needs a home? he or she would not think it a question worth answering. The cold winds of winter and gusting rain make the covering of canvas provided by a relief agency a poor shelter, and it is too noisy for conversation anyway.

Turn to a sophisticated young business person in any city, and you might be rewarded for using such an old-fashioned word with a supercilious gaze. That person might also be speechless. Home! the gaze seems to exclaim. That word isnt in my vocabulary or life. Nor is marriage. My parents used those words, and they are retired in a backwater.

The dictionary tells us that home is the place where we live, whether we are single, married, young, or old. The definition also includes the idea of a family or another group living in a house. Further, it says that home is the place we are at ease.

What is a tree without its roots held deeply in the soil? What is a cup without its saucer? What are letters if they arent put into words and sentences? What is a childs life like if there is no home and no family to belong to?