Dear single sisters:

As an older single lady, it has been on my heart for some time to write to encourage you in cultivating a heart for your home. I have been blessed to be a stay-at-home daughter for almost thirty years—so I have experience in this field. ? I know that I often fail, and am an unhelpful, unjoyful, sullen daughter. There have been many ups and downs through the years. These are some thoughts for my sisters who are daughters that perhaps feel at times like “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence,” or that are having a bad day, one of those days when you can’t do anything right.

Let me take you back 33 years ago when a young man and a young lady were courting.

They lived about 600 miles apart and most of their courting was done by letter. One day, after about a year of courtship, mostly by mail, the young lady was feeling very insecure. She looked at the problems in the home where she was born and in many of the homes of the students that she was teaching. As she looked, she realized that the wife and mother of the home held a very important key to making the home happy. She knew that it also depended on the man, but she was looking at her own role. She began to wonder if she could do her part to make a happy home. She knew this was God’s plan, but she had never had a good role model to watch closely. Could she do it? Was it better for her to stay single and teach school and be happy in the calling she was finding so fulfilling?

 I remember as a girl thinking about what I wanted to do when I grew up. I thought maybe I could be a missionary—all the missionary stories we heard made it sound like an exciting adventure to go into foreign lands and lead heathen to the Lord! It would be nice to be a mother, I thought, to have babies to take care of and my own little house to work in.

In this issue’s Sisters’ Corner, we break from our usual custom of having an article by a sister, and turn to George Muller for a powerful testimony of meek service. After all, George only relates the story ... the lady is the one doing the teaching ... by her example! While sisters have a greater opportunity of practicing submission to authority, this blazing testimony of “Christ in you” can be appropriated into the life of the brothers as well. Amen!

And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the LORD, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth. Ju 11:36

Jephthah’s daughter is a beautiful example of nonresistance and submission. Please read the whole passage in Judges 11:29-40, which is not printed here to save space.

Voices from the Early Church

It is not enough that God know us to be chaste: we must appear so before men. Especially in these times of persecution we must accustom our bodies to the hardships which they may likely be called to suffer.

What would you think if one morning upon waking you were to read your own obituary in the paper? This actually happened to Alfred Nobel, originator of the famous Nobel Prizes in the late 1800s. He woke one morning to see his own picture and obituary in the paper, proclaiming him “the merchant of death” because of his experiments with nitroglycerine explosives and dynamite. It must have been quite shocking to read what the media thought of him. The obituary—written in a French newspaper—reported: “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.” Though the obituary was a mistake—it was his brother who had died—it made Alfred stop and think.

 

Part 1

My story starts out as any normal teenager. I was a young girl full of desires and ambitions. One of them was to someday be swept off my feet by “Prince Charming.” I envisioned myself with a row of healthy, active children and a loving, supportive husband. After all, wasn’t that what every young girl did? Only “odd” girls with “queer dispositions” didn’t marry.