Monday, June 19, 2023

Four Scriptural Images of Home

Good morning, friends!

My family and I are away today visiting Colonial Williamsburg, so I thought I would share this post that I originally posted almost a year ago now.  It is from the book Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life, and I just love these three biblical depictions of home. I hope you'll enjoy it, and I'll see you back here in a few day!

Making a home involves constructing and maintaining an environment in which people can flourish in ways in which God desires for people to flourish. Four images, each of them rooted in Christian scripture and tradition, suggest themselves as ways in which Christians can picture what home is for and thus some of what might be involved in making a home.

❈ AN INN
"In the first place, a home is an inn. An inn is a place where a traveler can find a meal and shelter for the night, usually in the company of other travelers. It is a modest sort of place, offering simple accomodations to people of modest means, and with normal, forseeable human needs. Joseph and Mary sought refuge at an inn when Mary's time of delivery drew near. The Good Samaritan took the man who had fallen among theives to an inn, where he cared for the man. So also should a home be a place where it is safe to be if you are hungry or tired, or sick, or a new parent, or newly born yourself, for that matter, because meals and beds and the care that goes with them are available there as a matter of course.

❈ A SANCTUARY
A home is also a sanctuary. A santuary is a place to set apart for encounter, whose separateness exists for the sake of relationship. When God led the people of Israel out of Egypt, he commanded them to build him a sanctuary so that he could dwell in their midst. The psalmist sings of entering the sanctuary of God and having his despair turn to confidence as he encounters God and God's renewing comfort. A sanctuary, in other words, is not a cocoon whose inhabitants dwell in splendid, inpenetrable isolation. A sanctuary has boundaries that are meant to be crossed. A home, likewise, should be a place with a door that can be opened and closed. A place whose very separateness serves to foster relationship both within and across its boundaries. 

 A CITY
A home is a city. Again and again in scripture we find God's desire for human flourishing expressed in terms of a city, from the earthly Jerusalem of the prophet and psalmist, to the heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation. A city is an active place, there are a lot of people there, and they are busy with a lot of things. A city is very different from a suburb, the central notion of which involves getting away from other people and the everyday commotion of urban life. Often we can be surprised when running a household involves more or less continuous activity. We shouldn't be. The life of a city ebbs and flows with the hour and the season, but it never ceases altogether; so it is with the life of a home.

❈ A CASTLE
And finally, a home is a castle. When scripture describes the dwelling place that God designs for himself and for humans, it does so in terms that call to mind the rich ceremonious beauty of a castle with all its pomp and pageantry; the tabernacle, with all its rich fabrics and woods, the jewel-encrusted New Jerusalem. This kind of labor-intensive richness is out of fashion nowadays; and we want everything to be quick and easy, or we think we do. But there is something in the human soul that longs for beauty beyond necessity. Of course, it is easier not to make the bed. But there is a substantial difference between turning down a neatly made bed in the evening and lying down in a mess of sheets left from the night before. To be beautiful, a home need not be luxurious in size or in contents. The beauty of a well-kept home may arise simply from structure and ritual and attention to detail, things that can be present even in the most modest of homes.



- MARGARET KIM PETERSON
Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life


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