Incubating character in the home

My father, age 90, moved in with us last year, and it is all to the good. I didn’t say it is all without challenges. But who ever produced anything worthwhile without challenges?

My husband and I see this new arrangement as entirely by God’s design. The three of us are discovering areas God wants to sanctify in us before we die, so that we will bring into the next world with us the character He wants us to have. This is an opportunity not to be squandered. Thus, this incubator for creating character.

According to an online dictionary, an incubator is “an enclosed apparatus providing a controlled environment for the care and protection of premature or unusually small babies.”

A home is an incubator, in a sense. It is a “controlled environment” (controlled by God) “for the care” (and sanctification) “of premature” Christians. God has brought three people together under one roof in Glenside, Pa., for our perfecting. God fully expects this to be effective. One cannot read the Bible fairly without seeing all the things God expects us to be able to do before we go to meet Him.

Here are the things, according to Scripture, that should be possible for us to have, be, and do: It is possible to have “godliness” (Titus 1:1) and to be “above reproach” (1:6). It is possible for “older men,” like my father and my husband, to be “sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness” (2:2). It is possible for “older women,” like myself, and even “young women” to be “reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine” (2:3), to be “self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands” (2:5). It is possible for all of us to “show [ourselves] in all respects to be a model of good works” (2:7), with “sound speech that cannot be condemned” (2:8).

All these things mentioned above are things that are possible—in this present life. Indeed, they are not only possible but commanded. The old saying “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” has no place in a Christian’s thought life and in this home where the youngest of us is 60. God states quite clearly that we are not to have an attitude of treading water till He finally clears out all the junk in us automatically at His coming, in the blinking of an eye. Rather, He tells us to see to it in this life, because Jesus gave Himself “to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (2:14). The purifying is as much for this earthly time as the zeal for good works is.

So let the sanctification begin! We welcome the year ahead, with husband, wife—and father makes three.