STEWARDSHIP
FOR TODAY’S WOMAN – THE WIFE
I’m continuing to share something
from the book, Stewardship for Today’s Woman written by Helen
Kingsbury-Wallace. As a reminder, it was written in 1960.
In my last blog, I spent time
discussing the first chapter titled The
Career Woman. In this blog, I’m going to discuss the next chapter, The Wife.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I
started this chapter. Perhaps I was dreading the thought of the “proper” sequence
of events: a single career woman becoming married and becoming “the wife” that
every woman should. To be fair, it didn’t read quite like that. It does
spent the majority of the chapter talking about how a married woman is a
steward, of her husband, of her family, of her home, of her life and of her
time. If she does “her job” properly, then her husband will grow and become
happier. It does have one line (on page 36) “it is true that the right kind of
wife has great influence over her husband, shares her possessions with him,
merges her life with his. But it is also true that she is also an individual
and has a separate life which, in order to maintain the integrity of her personality,
she must keep inviolate.” [1]
Th chapter does spent time talking
about the “tools” that the woman has, including her vacuum cleaner and freezer,
and then devolves right into a discussion about not wasting precious leisure
time because her tools help her housekeeping tasks become less time consuming.
(sigh)
The chapter spent a great deal of time
helping the reader understand that become a good neighbor, a good churchgoer,
Bible reader, Bible study leader. I believe that the author views this as the
wife’s job as a steward.
“A wife, a homemaker, can serve in
her home and in her neighborhood. If she is alert and, in the best sense,
aggressive, she can find a thousand opportunities.” “She can render the best
service.” “She will use some of her newly-won leisure to think about the
challenging opportunities presented by her particular resources and her community.
She will “face up” to her stewardship responsibilities.”[2]
All of these sentences appear
at the end of the chapter on the same page.
What I gleaned from this chapter,
after I got over my focus on the housewife thoughts, was that we are all
stewards of what we have been given. Utilizing the “assets” we have will enable
us to steward those assets and ourselves to better the world, and to serve God.
And I don’t think it has a whole lot do with whether we have a vacuum cleaner
or an electronic dishwasher!
I will continue my review of this book in next
month’s blog.
Please
feel free to contact me at (315) 427-3668 or susanranous@unyumc.org if you found this interesting.
