Happy Labor Day, Mama!
Happy Labor Day, Mama!
Thank you for your labor every day for your family. Maybe you are a fulltime homeschooling mama and homemaker. Perhaps you homeschool while working fulltime as a nurse or an attorney either away from home or from home. Maybe you are a homeschooling mama and craftswoman who sells on Etsy. Perhaps your children have graduated from homeschool or you are retired after a long career and your work for your children now is encouraging them, hosting them, serving them, and lifting them up in prayer. Whatever your stage of life, thank you for your labor for your family—your past labor and your current labor.
God sees every way you have served them.
For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro
throughout the earth
that He may strongly support
those whose heart is completely His.
2 Chronicles 16:9a
Just for fun I’d like to share a series of five engravings from the mid-1600s, entitled Five Feminine Occupations. As tired as we may be from all of our labors of love, we can be grateful that our “feminine occupations” are more convenient than these. Each image was created by Geertruydt Roghman, a Dutch painter, engraver, and printmaker. Roghman lived from 1625 to 1657. She was from a family of artists who lived in Amsterdam. Each is courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1956.
Two Women Sewing, Plate 1
A Young Woman Ruffling, Plate 2
A Woman Cooking, Plate 3
A Woman Spinning, Plate 4
A Woman Doing Housework, Plate 5
Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,
But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.
Give her the product of her hands,
And let her works praise her in the gates.
Proverbs 31:30-31