On Earth As It In Heaven- Making Our Homes A Haven

Good Monday morning, my friends! How are you? Did you survive the time change and losing that extra hour of sleep yesterday? To be honest it's the change in autumn that typically messes with my rhythm more than the spring, which you might think would be just the opposite. But for whatever reason, it's gaining an hour that takes me a couple of weeks to recover from. In some ways I wish they would just do away with this nonsense altogether and leave time be, but, I must admit, I didn't mind that extra hour of sunshine last night one little bit. Still, left to its Creator, this would all happen naturally anyway, so why not let it? But now I'm getting sidetracked so let's move on.

I'm currently participating in a lovely Lenten reading of This Beautiful Truth by Sarah Clarkson (you can learn more about that here) and I wanted to share a short passage from my reading with you this morning.

"Where my parent's dwelt, home was rich and heaven was close. Even as a child disturbed by change, my childhood was largely secure. For the moving van would barely have lumbered away when my mom would locate the kettle and unwrap the cups for tea. In every home we lived in there was art on the walls and music in the air. There were family dinners eaten by candlelight, stacks of books in baskets, our bedrooms made colorful, our beds soft. My mother set to the work of beauty. Where she lived, the rooms were lovely, the meals delicious and the space claimed for love. 

But the older I've gotten, the more I realize that she did not act alone. My mother was dependent upon God's life creating within her the vision she could not sustain alone. The Spirit who brooded over the vast and formless void at the dawn of time is the same one who broods within our hearts, and the words he speaks within us are the ones by which we act with and in him, calling light out of darkness and form out of the shaplessness of our fallen lives. 

All that's required of us is a willingness to come home. To be made welcome by God and to let our belonging transform not only the inward rooms of our hearts but the outward rooms of our lives, so that where we are we dwell in heaven, though we yet live in the broken earth."

- SARAH CLARKSON

This Beautiful Truth

The reason I wanted to share this passage is because if there's one thing I've come to realize more and more as the years pass, it is that I can do relatively little about the changes that are happening in the world outside my door. But, there is one domain, one atmosphere, that with the Lord's help I can influence and that is in my home. This is where, in partnership with the Spirit, I can strive for just a bit of "On earth as it is in heaven." I just found this so inspirational and uplifting, and couldn't we all do with a bit of that in today's restless world?

10 Ideas For Making Your Home A Haven

And while we're on the subject of ushering a little heaven into our homes, here's an article that speaks a bit to that. What other ideas do you have, or things that you do that make your home a haven?

And now I'm off my friends, to tend to my own home! The temperatures are warming up nicely this week and that's re-energizing me, which is a good thing because spring cleaning is on the horizon!

Until then. . . .

❊