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A Tranquil Home |
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Whose home is ideal to you? Whose home feels like home to you? More than likely it is not a grand place that you have been in. You may not even be able to communicate why it was that a place was so calming, so tranquil; you just knew that it spoke peace to your soul. You may see a picture and just say, I want that and off we go, buying the necessary things to create that haven, yet when it is done, something is missing ... Often said, and correctly so, a church is not the building but the people. The same is so about a home; it is not the building. A home is the people. Time and time again, we hear from people entering our home that it is a peaceful place to be, even perfect. For the most part it is peaceful. It may be perfect compared to most, but it is not when compared to the heavenly home that awaits us. We want to have tranquil homes and we can spend our lives working to create this aura, spending vast amounts of money to create a place where our family will happily want to be, but it will be an aura, an appearance, an impression, something not necessarily genuine. What is real is what is the soul. To have a tranquil home, the kind your family wants to come home to, there are many things to consider, to work toward. When building something beautiful, the first stages can be the most difficult, require the utmost care, are unseen, but essential to a lasting product. Visual people often think that the initial preparation is so boring and we can tend to by pass it for the “pretties” but as one who has tried the quick way first, I have found that His way is best. There are unexpected opportunities for much beauty and joy along the journey; you will find that the journey is the beauty, the tranquility. You will experience serendipity, an often elusive thing that brings great delight because you never really expected it! I have seen women buying beautiful accessories for their home while simultaneously scolding a child brutally. Something is very sad in this picture. The woman may make a house fit for a magazine cover, but that will mean nothing but hypocrisy if her family is not first in her life. To me, who loves to look at beautiful homes, I would have no desire to see her place; I think it would feel cold and uninviting. She has not been attentive to the bottom layers. Every few weeks I will add an essay here, sharing some reasons that I think we have tranquility in our home. The first is the foundation; it is Jesus Christ. There is no lasting beauty apart from Him; there are no shortcuts. Truly, as is often clichéd, anything worth having is worth working for, or fighting for. If there are things on this earth worth fighting for, then it is a tranquil home, for it is from this place that our loved ones go out; they need to be rested and confident when they leave and after a day of fighting dragons, our family returning need a haven, a refuge, a safe place, a home. I love my home because it is my family. We are not in any one place for so long, yet we are secure together and have a strong sense of home, whether in Florida where our home church is, in a hotel, on the farm in Pennsylvania where I grew up or in India, which is where we spend more time than anywhere else. For sure, there are simple things we can do to make a house immediately feel a more desirable place to be and I will give some of those ideas and steps too. They are all very simple though and can help everyone while a solid foundation takes shape. The simple, pleasing touches will be enjoyed even more once we are on “sure footing”. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. Whenever I hear this little song, I think of my Bible. There is such a fight for the Bible these days; there would not be a fight if it were not so important an issue. It does matter what material you use in building a home, if you want it to last. First step in having a tranquil home
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