We are all products of our times. We forget how it was with other times. The great missionary push of the 19th century would not have happened under a modern Focus on the Family mentality, as such missionaries would have been tarred and feathered in public forums for putting their kids in boarding schools for years at a time while they were away. As for discipling one’s wife, I will contend that’s a very recent notion, at least how we tend to understand it and practice it.

Jesus said many things about family, not all of them in keeping with modern notions among Christians. Perhaps we make a greater idol of family than we understand.

Rather than always viewing other ages under my selfish lens, I instead turn their lens on me and ask in what ways I’m wrong. Only then do I reverse it.

We all think too highly of our own way. Perhaps we should consider another’s with less judgment and our own with far more.

I was told that after A.W. died, Ada was asked if she missed him. She had been re-married by this time. Her reply was tragic to me. She said something like this: “A.W. was God’s man, but my new husband is my man.” Oh, that it would not be said of us! May we be wholly given to Him, and to those whom He has given us.