Guarding my House

Words shift their meanings over time.  Sometime the meaning remains but it's just kind of buried.

Like the word "keep."  When we define it in English, we quickly realize that it has a range of meanings--just check out Webster's if you doubt me.  A farmer keeps sheep.  I have kept my promise.  A woman keeps house.  She is a "housekeeper."

The Scriptures exhort us to be "keepers at home." (Titus 2:5)  A number of things may come to mind hearing this phrase.  When we think of a "housekeeper" we typically think of a married woman who spends her time cooking, cleaning, and caring for children.  She doesn't work outside the home.  This is our modern, cultural, English definition.

But let's take a closer look at the Greek.  Behind this phrase is a single compound word: "house" and "keep" put together.  It can mean "housekeeper" in the sense of someone who performs domestic duties.  But it has a broader meaning.  I think we can understand this better if we look at other passages of Scripture.

Proverbs 14:1 states that a wise woman builds her "house."  Well, I must say that I don't think this indicates that women were engaged in construction in Bible days.  Instead we see the word "house" as it was commonly used in the Old Testament: a household, a family.  We could say the wise or godly woman "builds" her family.  Caring for her husband and children isn't on some "to-do" list--it's at the center of her being.

The woman described in Proverbs 31 is an example of this.  The heart of her husband "trusts" in her--he knows she's not going to speak ill of him to her neighbors, or run up a big balance on the credit card buying shoes.  No, instead she does things that help out the economic situation of the family, and though not much is said about her children, we discover at the end of the passage that they esteem her highly.  She does things outside the home and even engages in trade--but she's not trying to escape her family.  She's actively "building" it, no matter where she is.

The second part of the word in Titus is "keep."  In the Greek it carries with it the idea of guarding.  We see this in English as well: the farmer keeps sheep.  He manages them, feeds them, and protects them.  Likewise, we are to guard our family.

Husbands do this too, although their role in building and protecting looks different.  Ours is often behind the scenes but just as important.  We protect our children from illness by using good hygiene and cooking healthy meals.  Along with our husbands, we teach them the Scriptures, and do our best to protect them from destructive influences in the world.  We pray for them.  We encourage our husbands and children, enabling them to do right.

Ever see a cute dishtowel in the store, and purchase it because it coordinates with your kitchen colors?  Even cleaning and decorating our homes are part of the family safeguard.  Keeping our tongues--watching what we say--is even more important.  Physically and emotionally, we want our homes to be places of rest.  You can help guard your husband from temptation by creating a welcome environment at home.

But most of all, we want our own hearts to be guarded with gospel armor. (Eph 6:10-18)  Don't let the cart get before the horse.  The better we understand the gospel of grace, the better able we will be to serve the Lord as a "family guardian."