“Sow righteousness for yourselves, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and showers his righteousness on you.” Hosea 10:12 NIV
We are beginning our fourth week at home and there is a bit of unfamiliarity with it still. I walk down the hallway and glimpse the brilliance of light reflected in the rooms, an inviting openness that awakens me to the newness of the morning. Its transformation brings wonderment that the big holes in the wall are no longer there. “All things have become new,” it says in the Bible, referring to the transformation of souls that have been spiritually changed. Newness, too, has come to this old house.
I shall be forever grateful that blessing has come to us in this form. But with this gratitude comes the responsibility of the covenant between God and us to use our home purposefully: to invite others in to share a meal; to ignite conversations that would seldom be spoken; to sit in community with others. We are home, breaking up the much fallow ground in our hearts so that the Lord can use us accordingly. God strengthens even our elder selves when we seek to be obedient to His Spirit.
I realize, too, the months of adjustment that Reid and Joy had to make to allow us to be at Papa’s in the interim with the multitude of boxes and furniture that came with us. Their hospitality helped us easily settle in to another routine and minimized the stress of relocating. We took multiple trips to Home Depot for paint color samples and to Homeworld, CS Wo, and Inspiration for living and dining room furniture. We disagreed on selections and changed our minds often, but by God’s grace we survived the sometimes unpleasant interchanges between us and finally mutually agreed on everything. We had one contention with Tom, our contractor, on his not having configured the pantry cabinet with pull-out shelves throughout. Rather, the cabinet had pull-out drawers on the bottom and open shelves on top, which Tom felt provided more adaptable storage. We left the pantry as installed because of the $2,000 price tag for reordering new cabinets. This encounter led dad to write a short story on getting to choose the kind of lollipop he wanted regardless of quality. My fictionalized account, however, would always choose superior quality whenever possible.
Maddy said one day she would like to have a blue house like this one. I think she is embracing the exploration of its newness. We are doing the same, imagining what it can be for us and for others, too. To God be all glory! Amen.
We are beginning our fourth week at home and there is a bit of unfamiliarity with it still. I walk down the hallway and glimpse the brilliance of light reflected in the rooms, an inviting openness that awakens me to the newness of the morning. Its transformation brings wonderment that the big holes in the wall are no longer there. “All things have become new,” it says in the Bible, referring to the transformation of souls that have been spiritually changed. Newness, too, has come to this old house.
I shall be forever grateful that blessing has come to us in this form. But with this gratitude comes the responsibility of the covenant between God and us to use our home purposefully: to invite others in to share a meal; to ignite conversations that would seldom be spoken; to sit in community with others. We are home, breaking up the much fallow ground in our hearts so that the Lord can use us accordingly. God strengthens even our elder selves when we seek to be obedient to His Spirit.
I realize, too, the months of adjustment that Reid and Joy had to make to allow us to be at Papa’s in the interim with the multitude of boxes and furniture that came with us. Their hospitality helped us easily settle in to another routine and minimized the stress of relocating. We took multiple trips to Home Depot for paint color samples and to Homeworld, CS Wo, and Inspiration for living and dining room furniture. We disagreed on selections and changed our minds often, but by God’s grace we survived the sometimes unpleasant interchanges between us and finally mutually agreed on everything. We had one contention with Tom, our contractor, on his not having configured the pantry cabinet with pull-out shelves throughout. Rather, the cabinet had pull-out drawers on the bottom and open shelves on top, which Tom felt provided more adaptable storage. We left the pantry as installed because of the $2,000 price tag for reordering new cabinets. This encounter led dad to write a short story on getting to choose the kind of lollipop he wanted regardless of quality. My fictionalized account, however, would always choose superior quality whenever possible.
Maddy said one day she would like to have a blue house like this one. I think she is embracing the exploration of its newness. We are doing the same, imagining what it can be for us and for others, too. To God be all glory! Amen.