This past Thanksgiving week became an extra-special occasion with the November 21st birth of my third grandson. Now my week filled up with the combination of preparing for the feast and minding the two, newly made big brothers. Precious hours spent in my home, caring for these no-longer youngest members of my family while also tending to some Thanksgiving tasks, gave me plenty of time for a different sort of reflection.
Between using the hand-cranked food mill to make applesauce and changing the middle brother’s disposable diapers, it hit me anew how fortunate I am to live with all these modern conveniences. But it also got me thinking: how did we humans come up with all these mechanisms for easing the tasks of life in the home?
History reminds us that for most of the world in most of the eras, societies have relegated women to second-class status. Even though the tide has begun turning in the past century, disparity remains. But these inventions for the home betray an important step in the right direction.
Whether a man or a woman spearheaded the re-tooling of the kitchen, laundry, and nursery seems irrelevant. Equally so, the current commercial success of the home industry fails to explain the initial motivation for pioneering these new ways of running our homes.
Instead, the ideas for improving our household tasks must have sprung from love – and probably, in most cases, the love that men had for women. Even where women had ideas for better ways of performing chores, they often lacked the agency for setting them in motion. It must have been men who listened, as well as men whose love-awakened sympathy took the time to develop inventions that facilitated the work convention laid at women’s door.
As we begin this month’s preparation to celebrate Jesus’ birth, I’m newly aware of God’s providence in designing us to grow up in families. See the subtle genius of our Lord who wields the so easily taken-for-granted love within our homes to jumpstart the dismantling of worldwide injustice.
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