“Home, sweet home”

Not long since, I sat with a family who had lost a precious loved one, among the most precious in the whole length of life: their mother—so precious, so loved, so needed, that except for their faith in a future where loved ones wait, this would have been all but unbearable. And then I heard a grateful son say what others have also said: “Our mother gave us everything that money couldn’t buy.” The same could be said of many mothers, of many fathers, of many families—that they give what money can’t buy: love and loyalty; learning, listening; trust, understanding; a wholesome humor; fair and firm discipline; a sense of being loved and wanted, counseled and encouraged; belonging; someone to confide in; someone to talk to; a living example of unselfish service; someone who could always be counted on. You can fashion all manner of social entities and institutions; you can substitute something less under circumstances of necessity, but there isn’t anything that can replace the love of parents, or improve upon this God-given relationship of life: mother, father, family. And when it is respected and faithfully preserved, this family love and loyalty can offer everything that money cannot buy. Well, of course, the family is people, and people are not perfect. And to those who have struggled, disagreed, and have sometimes all but pulled apart, yet somehow have endured and solved their differences, to these the years bring peace, assurance, satisfaction, and a kind of heroism in having done what should be done, in having preserved a home. Oh, let us live to find ourselves with loved ones—always and forever. And wherever life takes us, God bless us to have happy, hallowed homes—homes that we can turn to—“Home, sweet home.”