I spoke in church today on the sanctifying power of motherhood. Here is the text of my talk:
I want to begin my talk by summarizing a short story written by a nineteenth-century American writer named Bret Harte, called “The Luck of Roaring Camp.”
The story begins in Roaring Camp, a mining settlement up in the Sierra Nevada during California’s Gold Rush. It was like most other mining camps, and it’s residents were like most other miners. The term “roughs” applied to them was a distinction rather than a definition. Perhaps in the minor details of fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force. The strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had but one eye. One or two of them were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were reckless.
Now, these roughs were all collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the settlement because something was happening inside that cabin that had never happened in the camp before. Deaths were by no means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing. And at just that moment, a sharp, fussy cry — a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp — rose into the air.
