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January 8 - March 2, 2023
What makes a home is the life shared there, wherever that may be.
What greater joy can there be than to create a holding place for all that is sacred in life: faith, love, God, purpose, beauty, relationships, creativity, fun, the art of life, safety, shelter, feasting?
Building well is a long process. None of us will ever be perfectly wise or mature or loving. Creating a lifegiving home, then, is a long process taken one step, one season at a time. In the process, I’ve found, the home itself becomes wiser and more valuable.
We think of beautiful spaces and comforting traditions as spiritually unnecessary and underestimate the profound importance of a safe place for growing minds and souls.
God didn’t come merely to save us to a life beyond this world. He came to redeem the one we already inhabit.
When someone once asked me just what it was that my parents did that made me believe in God, without even thinking I said, “I think it was French toast on Saturday mornings and coffee and Celtic music and discussions and candlelight in the evenings . . .” Because in those moments I tasted and saw the goodness of God in a way I couldn’t ignore. What my parents—bless them—knew, what Elizabeth Goudge understood, is that to make a home right in the midst of the fallen world is to craft out a space of human flesh and existence in which eternity rises up in time, in which the Kingdom comes, in which
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Home is not merely a dwelling. It’s not merely a state of existence. It’s a story, a narrative spun out day by day, a story molded by the walls and hours and tasks and feasts with which we fill our time, reflecting the reality of the God whose love animates every aspect of our being.
Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 1 PETER 4:9, NIV
To invite someone into your home Is to take charge of their happiness For as long as they are under your roof. J. BRILLAT-SAVARIN
A home that says welcome opens hearts to real relationships. We want all who enter our little kingdom—family, friends, and guests—to know that they are welcome and cherished in this sacred place we call home.
Take a day, or half a day, or even an hour away. Sit somewhere quiet with a notebook and pen. Evaluate your use of time. Identify the major places where your attention is directed on a regular basis. Consider your home and what it reflects about your beliefs. And then consider how you, filled with the same creative energy that formed the cosmos, might fill and form the spaces of your home.
What daily rhythms will help me accomplish what needs to be done and enhance our relationships?
What chores need to be done each day? Who will do them, and how will I make sure they are done?
Am I doing something now that doesn’t need to be done?
What daily and weekly rituals will bring pleasure and mark important areas in which I can invest my moments?
Do I have any lingering feelings of guilt that I need to give to God? Is there any bitterness toward friends or family? Any resentment? Do any of my relationships need mending? Have I created any rifts between me and God that I need to clear up? Are there ways I have failed or disappointments I have carried that are draining my energy?
major areas of my life—physical (diet and exercise), emotional (my relationships with Clay, the kids, my friends, and our extended family), and spiritual (books I want to read, when is best to have a quiet time, what I will study or read in the Bible, ways I want to grow).
Loving words have the power to provide hope, encouragement, confidence, and energy for the tasks of every day.
A bedtime blessing gives children one last impression of their whole day, and it is a redeeming time of bringing and restoring and offering peace. Best of all, the same principle works with a spouse or roommate.
All our life accomplishments, from God’s point of view, will be summed up by how much we loved God and how much we loved other people.
Buying groceries, cooking meals, making cups of tea, providing snacks requires the sacrifice of time and energy. Keeping house—picking up those messes one more time—is a service of worship to God as we craft a place of beauty and comfort for all who enter our sanctuary of His very presence.
True influence and discipleship are formed intentionally by modeling ourselves after the ultimate lover—Jesus. He who bowed His knees to wash 120 man toes, who bent to embrace wiggly children who were clamoring for attention, who touched a prostitute and gave her grace, who gave His own failing disciple (Peter) hope and affirmation even in the midst of the man’s failures, and who then ultimately gave everything, out of love, for our redemption, becomes our own source and inspiration for forming a culture of love.
Listen! Most people have a deep desire to be known, understood, and affirmed. Take initiative to ask them questions about themselves. Get to know their stories, listen to what they are telling you with their words, emotions, eyes, and body language. Practice responding to people by perceiving what they are communicating. Reach out in love and find a way to affirm each person who comes into your life.
So much of life consists of dusty, normal days often punctuated by sickness (that no doctor can diagnose), thorny relationships (especially those involving family), general struggle (flat tires, money, irritation), and loneliness. I am keenly aware that my love of beauty is equaled by my total inability to force my life to be beautiful. The world and I myself are profoundly broken. My natural impulse in the midst of this is a quick discouragement that seeps into every vein of my being. It can end in a dark numbness of heart that leaves me incapable of either seeing beauty or allowing it to
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I open my eyes to God’s creative presence in the earth when busyness could easily distract and rob me of wonder. I reach out to needy people and unresponsive friends one more time. I take, with God’s help, the musty clay of dusty, messy days and mold it into hours of laughter, landmark feasts, music making, and memories.
The point is to carve out time and make it special—different, set apart, beautiful. Carve out a time for a little formality, a little warm fellowship, something you can all remember and repeat for years to come.
Beauty is about aesthetic creation, yes, but it is also about the creation of relational and spiritual spaces in which those who are weary can be comforted in “taste and see” ways. Beauty can be created in the sense of care—both physical and spiritual—offered to one who is lonely, sick, or suffering.
The wet, formless mud of March is the ground in which summer begins.
May your ordinary time and spaces be the same. No moment is useless, no day void when shaped by the creative power of love. May your mundane March realities be the ground in which you plant the seeds of faith, beauty, and hope that sprout into a life marked by the goodness of God.
We learned to take ourselves lightly because grace removed the burden of guilt, even as we worked toward a spiritual environment of maturity and forgiveness.
The point was to seek God’s presence before doing anything else in a given day.
I realized that hospitality contained a deeper dimension. It was a way to open the hearts of those I met to God’s love and ways.
In a culture that often views a child in terms of the expense in time and money he will cost in his lifetime, how important it is to intentionally recognize the infinite value of a tiny human being, created with the very imprint and image of God on his life, and to understand that this little one’s life will have consequences for eternity.
Children are the adults of the next generation, and so our love, education, training, and modeling of all that is valuable in life will indeed shape the history of the next adult generation.
Love to all little ones is spelled T-I-M-E.
By being prepared to meet the needs of our little visitors, we’ve found that many moments of frustration can be avoided.
remember to celebrate the joy of each day and the wonderful people in your life. Remember to take the time to enjoy.
God is active and present in every moment of our lives, but too often we are so caught up in how we ought to be rather than allowing ourselves to be swept up into the whirlwind of the Spirit. God desires that we learn to play again, to experience Him like little children do, open in wonder to the vastness and endless wonder of Him.
trips were always more fun as a result of considering everyone’s needs.
Heroism isn’t an act that begins in a moment of crisis. It is an atmosphere, a sense of self, an identity formed through many habits of thought, memory, and experience. Because the home is the center place of life, the ground in which action begins, you have the opportunity to create an atmosphere in which the heroic is valued, rooted, and grown.
Daily we have the creative choice to respond, to make, to give, to love.
Here is the pattern we see again and again: Challenges arise, and God comes through in time to meet them. Wilderness experiences leave us parched, and through them God teaches us patience, trust, and compassion for others. Doors eventually open, and God blesses us immensely.
God has the long-term view. All He asks of us is to allow ourselves to be caught up in His creative narrative, in the epic story He is telling with the entirety of history. Every day, every week, every month, and every year when we practice noticing what God is doing in our lives and look back intentionally to remind ourselves, we are allowing God to shape us into beautiful and stunning tributes to His faithful work.
Here are just a few of the events we try to record: Major life changes—anything from moving across country to graduating from college New relationships—either in personal or professional work Challenges and difficulties—from sickness to strife to struggle Goals attained and milestones achieved—losing weight, learning a new skill, gaining financial freedom Travel—a visit to a new city or state or country or a journey that brought new insight Spiritual experiences—encounters with grace, growth experiences, new awareness and understanding Special serendipitous blessings—divine encounters that
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The idea behind a memorial stone is simply to recognize a significant event or change in the previous year and put it in the context of God’s work in our lives.
Culture sets the tone for how all of us live our lives.
Culture helps people know who they are and provides a sense of identity and belonging.
So we strive to make our home a refuge where those outside struggles can be left behind for a time, where all of us can come to regroup and recharge. We want home to be a haven when they are discouraged and weary of heart and soul.
Our home culture has become richer because of the people we have folded into it.
If God has accepted us so completely into His family, we ought to look to do the same for others.
