More Luther quotes

These are also taken from Luther: The Estate of Marriage Sermon of 1522

"Now you tell me, when a father goes ahead and washes diapers or performs some other mean task for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool, though that father is acting in the spirit just described and in Christian faith, my dear fellow you tell me, which of the two is most keenly ridiculing the other? God, with all his angels and creatures is smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. Those who sneer at him and see only the task but not the faith are ridiculing God with all his creatures, as the biggest fool on earth. Indeed, they are only ridiculing themselves; with all their cleverness they are nothing but devil's fools."
Ram and I actually had a conversation about this. One day this summer I had hung the cloth diapers out on the line to dry. I love to hang the clothes on the line, because I feel like I'm accomplishing something AND saving money and electricity. But I hate to take them off the line. You see, when it is time to take them off the line, I don't want to put shoes on and/or get bit by mosquitoes and/or have to get all the Lambs ready to go outside with their shoes etc. So on this particular day, Ram offered to go get the clothes off the line. The neighbor high school/college age kids were outside. Just as Ram started to remove the diapers off the line, the neighbor kids started laughing very loudly. It probably had nothing to do with Ram, but it made him think. Then he thought to himself (and later told me), "Who cares if they laugh, I love my wife enough to help her take the clothes off the line."
Ram hasn't washed our cloth diapers because I'm very particular about laundry and I don't let him in the laundry room very often. But he loads the dishwasher as often as I do, if not more. He watches the Lambs so I can get a nap almost daily. He probably changes more diapers than I do. When he is at home, he helps me until the Lambs are all in bed. His attitude-he definitely does it all in Christian faith!
"St. Cyprian, that great and admirable man and holy martyr, wrote that one should kiss the new-born infant, even before it is baptised, in honour of the hands of God here engaged in a brand new deed. What do you suppose he would have said about a baptised infant? There was a true Christian, who correctly recognised and regarded God's work and creature. Therefore, I say that all nuns and monks who lack faith, and who trust in their own chastity and in their order, are not worthy of rocking a baptised child or preparing its pap, even if it were the child of a harlot. This is because their order and manner of life has no word of God as its warrant. They cannot boast that what they do is pleasing in God's sight, as can the woman in childbirth, even if her child is born out of wedlock."
Interesting.