House and Home

The above was addressed by the Apostle to women, but like all Scripture the use of gender does not mean only the identity of one or excuse duty from the other. In the full passage, reference is made to the whole family – not only the nuclear family of mother, father and child. To observe much of home-life, and hear talk of family members on every day experiences, we may wonder if modern persons have learned about what attitudes and environments ought to be relative to blood or intimate relationships. We seek to join the family bond and reflections of life and values God meant for us. The details are so extensive we must limit for this Page. We are interested here in turning a house (or tent, or cabin, or palace) into a home. A cabin is better than a palace in that it can be managed by the family. A palace is a type of business establishment requiring other persons to keep it manageable. Royalty may buy better with management than family.

At 5:00 pm today (06/25/2013) I will go to my elder son’s home where he and his wife will have a dinner for a visiting son (my grandson) and his wife with their two boys (my great-grandsons). We are pulling for a daughter for them early in 2014. After happy fellowship and more than sufficient gastronomic delights we will go to the home of another grandson (from my younger son and his wife) with wife and infant daughter. The entourage, (as you may have detected) involves four generations of our family. Our purpose is not only to make up for some lost fellowship (from that family representation living out of state), but to provide some sort of blessing and dedication on the home recently purchased by our family’s visiting couple – a visit from a far country called Tennessee. All this is done by a number of persons feeling they belong.

I shall interrupt the meaningful noise somewhere along the way for a purpose very important to me – to offer a blessing in the presence of other family representatives on this home and members of my extended family living in a life/love place – owned by a son. It is to be made lovely, not by the materials necessary for the structure, but because of the love and ideals it was meant by God to represent. God began the human story with the marriage of man and woman to increase the gift of life (be fruitful and multiply) – to be lived in what we may call a garden. It is a garden (even if sometimes imperfectly husbanded) if there is a context of love and responsibility for each other before God and society. Here is our first society.

Every person has the right to stand wherever that person is standing at the moment. Having life from God the individual belongs where he or she may be found, even if not a resident of the state where that person is at the moment. That right is extended to sanctuary, a concept usually noted for sacred structures. A house, when it becomes a home, is a sacred structure. Without reason, it is not to be violated even by the strong officials of the land, and never by a thief or other enemy. Here is independence and right that is made sacred by God. It happens when we are determined to please God with proper care for the persons in the home, for its children, the love of the members, and the empathy born of righteousness. All this turns a house into a home. I am willing to delay life transition for me who, in my tenth decade, cannot be far from that transition. There I will find the person who made our house a home, and partly for her I have continued the patterns she offered. I have surely failed in some factors, but take comfort in never letting go of the human person, who helped me, under God, find fulfillment in life, with love, beauty, intimacy, and scores of other virtues. I have quoted the following lines in many a home for seventy years, including the one you, Steve and Beth (noted above), had before this one. Bless this house, O Lord we pray. Make it safe by night and day. Bless these walls so firm and stout keeping want and trouble out. Bless this chimney standing tall, and let Thy peace lay over all. And may we live our lives free, until we find our home with Thee. When your children establish their own family units, would you read this to them with the point made that somewhere in their ancestry this special request was made with prayers for its fulfillment of word and implication for them? Home ought to be a place of peace, love, safety, nurture, understanding, joy, acceptance, faith, righteousness, devotion – home like unto a vestibule of heaven.