Family Life in Hard Times
The household is the first church, the first school, and the first refuge. Raising children, keeping a marriage steady, and teaching the Word while the world shakes.
“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”Deuteronomy 6:6–7 (KJV)
The parts of this series so far have mostly worked outward: the pantry, the cellar, the garden, the clinic, the workshop, the road, and the church. This part turns inward, to the place where every one of those plans either holds together or falls apart. The home.
A family can have a year of food stored and still come apart under the strain. Another family, with far less, can come through hard times closer to one another and closer to God than they were before. The difference is rarely the supplies. It is what was built into the household long before the trouble came.
The Household Was the System
In the world after the Bronze Age collapse, the palace economies were gone. What remained was the family. Israel in the days of the Judges was organized from the household up: the beit av (the “father’s house”), then the clan, then the tribe. You can see that structure in Joshua 7:14, where the LORD sorts the people tribe by tribe, family by family, and household by household.
The father’s house was not just where people slept. It was the farm, the workshop, the school, the clinic, the nursing home, the place of worship, and the first line of defense. Archaeologists have found the typical Israelite house of the period: a modest building with rooms around a central space, livestock and storage on the ground floor, and the family living and sleeping above. Grandparents, parents, children, and sometimes servants and sojourners all under one roof or in houses clustered around a shared courtyard.
Modern families have handed nearly all of those jobs to someone else. Food comes from the store, education from the school, care for the sick and elderly from institutions, and entertainment from a screen. That arrangement works well while the systems run. When they stop, every one of those jobs comes back home, often all at once. A family that has never done any of them together will be learning under pressure.
Ruth: A Family Story from the Days of the Judges
Scripture gives us one book that is entirely about a family in hard times, and it is set in exactly the period this series has been studying. “Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land” (Ruth 1:1).
Elimelech took his wife Naomi and their two sons out of Bethlehem, ironically “the house of bread,” to escape the famine in Moab. In Moab, Elimelech died. His sons married, and then they died too. Ten years later, Naomi was a widow in a foreign land with two widowed daughters-in-law and nothing left. She went home so broken that she told the women of Bethlehem, “Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me” (Ruth 1:20).
And yet this is one of the most hopeful books in the Bible. What carried that shattered family through?
- Loyalty. Ruth refused to leave: “whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” (Ruth 1:16). Families survive hard times when their members decide in advance that they will not abandon one another.
- Work. Ruth went out to glean in the fields the same week they arrived, under a provision of the Law that required landowners to leave the edges and the leftovers for the poor (Leviticus 19:9–10).
- Extended family and community. Boaz, a relative, noticed her, protected her, fed her, and finally redeemed the family’s land and name.
- Trust in God’s providence. Boaz blessed Ruth by the LORD God of Israel, “under whose wings thou art come to trust” (Ruth 2:12). The book ends with a baby in Naomi’s lap and a genealogy that leads to King David, and through him to Jesus Christ.
The famine was real. The grief was real. But God was writing something through that family that none of them could see at the time.
Children in Hard Times
Children carry what they see
Children take their emotional cues from the adults around them. They may not understand what a grid failure is, but they understand a tight voice, a slammed cabinet, and a parent who has stopped sleeping. The calm of a household usually starts with the calm of its parents.
That does not mean pretending everything is fine. Children can tell when they are being lied to, and it frightens them more than the truth. Tell them what is happening, honestly and at a level they can carry. Tell them what the family is doing about it. And then let them be children. Jesus’ word applies at the kitchen table: “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matthew 6:34). Do not hand a child an adult’s worries.
Routine is one of the strongest comforts a child has. Regular meals, regular chores, regular prayer, and a regular bedtime tell a child that the world still has a shape, even when the outside world has lost its own.
“Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.”Psalm 131:2
Give them real work
In the world of the Bible, children worked. David kept his father’s sheep as a boy. Rebekah drew water for her household, and then for Abraham’s servant and all ten of his camels (Genesis 24:19–20). Ruth gleaned. This was not cruelty. It was how children became capable adults.
“It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth” (Lamentations 3:27). Children who carry real responsibility gain confidence, competence, and a sense that they matter to the family. Even a small child can gather eggs, carry kindling, fill water jugs, or help pull weeds. Older children can learn to cook, can, sharpen tools, tend animals, and give basic first aid. Start now, while mistakes are cheap and nobody is hungry.
Teach them the stories
When Israel crossed the Jordan, God had them pile up twelve stones, “that this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones?” (Joshua 4:6). The memorial existed to prompt the question, so the parents could tell the story.
Psalm 78 describes the same duty: “shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done… That they might set their hope in God” (Psalm 78:4, 7). In hard times, children need to know that God has carried His people through famine, war, exile, and plague before. Tell them about Joseph’s storehouses, Ruth’s gleaning, Elijah’s ravens, and the widow’s cruse of oil. Tell them what God has done in your own family’s history, too.
If the screens go dark, the Scripture your children have memorized will still be there. So will the hymns they know by heart. Put it into them now.
Let them play
When God promised to restore Jerusalem after the exile, one of the signs He named was this: “the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof” (Zechariah 8:5). Children playing is a mark of peace. Keep it in your home even when times are hard. Games, stories, music, laughter around a lamp. Joy is not frivolous in a crisis. It is a form of resistance against fear.
Keeping the Marriage Steady
Hard times put enormous strain on a marriage. Fear, fatigue, hunger, and endless decisions wear people down, and the person closest to you is the easiest one to take it out on.
“Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow… and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”Ecclesiastes 4:9–10, 12
The threefold cord is a husband, a wife, and the Lord between them. A few practical guards:
- Settle the big decisions together, and early.Where would you go if you had to leave? When would you leave? Who would you take in? Arguing about those things in calm times is far better than arguing about them in a crisis.
- Divide the labor clearly. The Proverbs 31 woman “riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household” and “is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet” (Proverbs 31:15, 21). That is a household where everyone knows their work and does it ahead of need.
- Do not go to bed angry. “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath” (Ephesians 4:26). Under stress, small offenses grow fast if they are left overnight.
- Guard each other’s rest. Exhausted people make bad decisions and say things they regret. Take turns.
- Pray together out loud. Husbands and wives are “heirs together of the grace of life,” and Peter warns that friction between them hinders their prayers (1 Peter 3:7).
The Elderly and the Vulnerable at Home
Naomi was an elderly widow with no means of support, and the whole book of Ruth turns on whether anyone would care for her. In hard times, the old, the sick, and the disabled are the most exposed. Scripture puts their care squarely on the family first: “let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God” (1 Timothy 5:4).
Older family members are not only people to be cared for. They are often the ones who remember how things were done before everything ran on electricity: how to put up a garden, cure meat, mend clothes, and stretch a dollar. “The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness” (Proverbs 16:31). Ask them to teach. Write down what they know. That is the Part 6 lesson again, and grandparents are the smiths many families already have.
Practically, know the medications, medical needs, and mobility limits of every vulnerable person in your household, and plan for how you would care for them without the usual services.
Grief Is Part of It
It would be dishonest to write about family life in hard times without saying this plainly: hard times bring loss. Naomi buried a husband and two sons. Families in every collapse in history have grieved.
Christian families do not have to pretend. Naomi was allowed to say “call me Mara.” The Psalms give us whole prayers of lament. Jesus wept at the grave of His friend, even knowing He was about to raise him (John 11:35). “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart” (Psalm 34:18). Make room in your home for honest sorrow, and keep pointing one another to the hope of resurrection.
And watch over one another. If anyone in your household seems to be sinking under the weight of it, or speaks of not wanting to go on, take it seriously and get them help. That is part of keeping the household too.
The Rhythm of a Godly Household
When everything outside is unpredictable, the rhythm inside the home becomes a lifeline. Scripture gives us three anchors.
Daily prayer. “Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice” (Psalm 55:17). Begin and end the day together before God, even if it is only a few minutes. Read a passage, pray, sing a hymn.
Shared meals. The early believers continued “breaking bread from house to house,” eating “with gladness and singleness of heart” (Acts 2:46). A meal eaten together, with thanks given, is one of the most steadying things a family can do.
Sabbath rest. This is the one most likely to be dropped under pressure, and God saw that coming. “Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest” (Exodus 34:21). Even in plowing and harvest, the busiest and most urgent seasons of an agricultural year, God commanded rest. In the wilderness He provided a double portion of manna so His people could keep it (Exodus 16:22–26). Rest is an act of trust. It says that our survival does not finally depend on our labor.
Hebrew & Greek Word Study
בַּיִתbayit · house, household, family
The word means both the building and the people in it, and Scripture rarely separates the two. “But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15). Joshua was not dedicating a structure. He was answering for every soul under his roof. A godly house is first a godly household.
חֶסֶדchesed · loyal love, steadfast kindness
The key word of the book of Ruth. Naomi prays that the LORD will “deal kindly” (show chesed) with her daughters-in-law (Ruth 1:8), and Boaz praises Ruth’s “kindness” (3:10). It is love that keeps its commitments when keeping them is costly. It is the same word used again and again of God’s own covenant faithfulness. Families held together by chesed survive what families held together by convenience do not.
παιδείαpaideia · training, instruction, discipline
“Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). The word covers the whole work of raising a child: teaching, correcting, training, and shaping. Hebrews 12 uses it of God’s own training of His children, which “yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (12:11). Hard times are often part of how the Father raises His own.
What Jesus Taught Through His Own Family
The Son of God spent about thirty years in an ordinary household in Nazareth. He “was subject unto” Joseph and Mary, and He “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:51–52). Most of the Savior’s earthly life was spent in exactly the kind of daily family faithfulness this post describes: work, worship, obedience, and growth.
When His disciples tried to shoo children away, He was “much displeased” and said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). Children are not a distraction from the work of God’s kingdom. They are part of it.
And in the worst hour any family has ever known, hanging on the cross, Jesus looked down at His mother and the disciple He loved, and made sure she would be cared for: “Woman, behold thy son!… Behold thy mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her into his own home (John 19:26–27). In His own agony, He provided for His family.
Jesus also widened the meaning of family. “For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother” (Mark 3:35). Not everyone reading this has a spouse, children, or living parents. In hard times, the church must be family to the widow, the single person, the orphan, and the one whose relatives are far away or gone. No believer should have to face a collapse alone.
Where to Begin
- Start or restart family worship. Pick a time, read a short passage, pray, and sing. Keep it simple enough that you will actually keep doing it.
- Give every child a real job. Something the family genuinely depends on, sized to their age, and done every day.
- Have the hard conversations as a couple now.Where you would go, when you would leave, who you would take in, and how you would make decisions together under pressure.
- Write down what your elders know. Sit with parents and grandparents and record their skills, recipes, and stories, along with the family’s history of God’s faithfulness.
- Make a care plan for the vulnerable.Medications, medical needs, mobility, and who is responsible for whom.
- Build memory into your children. Scripture, hymns, and the stories of what God has done. Put it where no outage can reach it.
- Protect the Sabbath now. If your family cannot rest in good times, it will not rest in hard ones.
- Adopt someone. Find the widow, the single neighbor, or the family far from relatives, and make them part of your household’s circle before the need comes.
The days of the Judges were famine years, raiding years, and years of grief. But in the middle of them, in a small barley field outside Bethlehem, God was knitting a family back together through one young widow’s loyalty. Out of that household came a shepherd king, and out of his line came the Good Shepherd. God has always done His greatest work through faithful families in dark times. He is not finished.
“…choose you this day whom ye will serve… but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”Joshua 24:15
Father, You set the solitary in families and You call Yourself a Father to the fatherless. Make our homes places of faith, loyalty, and peace. Give husbands and wives patience with each other, and give parents wisdom and calm for the children You have entrusted to us. Let our children grow up knowing Your works and setting their hope in You. Help us honor our elders and care for the weak among us. Where there is grief, draw near to the brokenhearted. And for those who have no family, make Your church their home. As for us and our houses, we will serve the LORD. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
To God be all the Glory · Maranatha
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