Chapter 8
The Right to a Normal Home Life
"After marriage a lady worker continues to be a missionary in active service and her changed status will afford new opportunities for service. She will need rightly to apportion time to language study, home duties and her calling as a missionary. This will require changes in outlook and habits, but if the responsibilities of married life have been prayerfully accepted the varying claims on time and strength will not result in a permanent conflict of loyalties.
"The establishing of a Christian home should be for the glory of God and the spread of the Gospel. One danger to be avoided is that of missionaries becoming so absorbed in their home as to neglect an active ministry amongst the people to whom they have been called. It is the mutual responsibility of both husband and wife to see that each does not hinder the other from fulfilling his or her ministry. Where there are children, it is recognized that new responsibilities are involved, but care should be taken that family claims do not monopolize the time and energies of either parent. Children who grow up in an atmosphere of loving yet firm discipline are not only a joy to their parents but an asset to the work of the Gospel. But when children are over-indulged or uncontrolled, whether on the field or at home, serious harm to God's cause as well as to the reputation of the Mission may result."
—The Overseas Manual of the
China Inland Mission
Overseas Missionary Fellowship
(1955), p. 22.
What a wonderful thing is a Christian home! What a privilege to be able to establish, among thousands of darkened, pagan homes, one that is truly Christian; and to be able to live out the love of Christ in actual family relationships before people who know nothing of it!
This privilege has not been given to me. The Lord has not led me in that path. And yet, as I have observed many young couples on the mission field, and older ones too, I have been able to see a little of the price they have had to pay. The outsider, looking on, saw only the love and blessing that radiated from these homes. But as I lived in some of them, I found that these young couples were faced with constant problems, and even frustrations, and I wondered whether or not I could have overcome all obstacles in the gallant way in which they did.
Shall we take a look at the sort of thing a young married couple on the mission field has to face? We will call them John and Mary, and make them just ordinary folk who meet the kind of situations most young missionaries meet.