Keep Calm and Dog On: We Are Helped in Our Duty by a Quiet Heart

I am a stay-at-home mom. There are days when I am at home in my job, rocking the comfortable clothes and cuddles and cookies in the oven. But there are days (or perhaps times in each day) when it’s sheer hard work. It’s constant interruptions (even the interruptions are interrupted). Sometimes it can seem like an endless round of thankless menial tasks. A precious friend of mine, a wiser woman than I, once described motherhood in a comment on this blog as a series of deaths to self. (My Self wants to write this right now. My Self has been interrupted by my Duty (and his big sisters and his baby brother) seventeen times since I started this paragraph.)

Doggedly On: We Are Helped in Our Duty By Doing It

In the same way, when I do my duty, I am helped to go on doing it. Why is it easier to obey once we begin? Is it that we are made creatures of habit—and this is turned to good account when the habits we build into our lives are faithful ones? Is it that we somehow actualize or demonstrate our faith by acts of obedience, however small, and God (the one who rewards those who seek him) then comes to our aid?

Women's MinistryBetsy KirkMarch 27, 2015Duty, Obedience, Responsibility, Work, Press On

Of Duty and Other Dirty Words

Just a question: When did “duty” become a dirty word?

We laugh, admitting that sometimes we tell our children to obey “because I said so” as though it is a silly and unreasonable response—when surely shouldn’t it be considered, coming from parent to child, as a full answer? Whenever the word “ought” was struck from our working vocabulary (for struck it has been) we lost something precious: a big, basic building block from the foundations of faithfulness.

The Ministry Journal & Parent’s Corner

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