At some point, all parents will hear their exhausted, overwhelmed child whine, “Mommy, I wanna go home.” Even very young children know, without being explicitly taught, that HOME is a place of rest and comfort, the place all their familiar and favorite things are, and where their favorite people live.
This is the 4th in our HOME series. We’ve talked about home being a place of rest & refuge and a place where you can create & cultivate beauty. Today we’re talking about home as the place where we learn to love.
If you think about humanity’s first home, it was all about relationships. First, the man & woman learn one another. They learn how they’re different, one another’s preferences, how they complement each other. They learn how to fight, how to make up. They’re in it to win it, despite their mistakes—and they made some big ones.
Together, they commune with their Creator. They know His voice. They know His presence. Their spiritual buckets are full.
Home starts with those two basic relationships—with our Creator and (if we are not single) with our spouse. Other relationships follow…. Children, siblings, in-laws, extended family & friends. But they all start with the building block of home.
How can our homes help us learn to love God?
–Deut 6:6-9 …you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands I’m giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you’re at home and when you’re on the road, when you’re going to bed and when you’re getting up…write them on the doorposts of your home and on your gates….
What does that look like?
Atmosphere of learning/teaching (personal & group study/discussions; object lessons; daily observations & gratitude; stewardship)
Literally WRITE scriptures on the doorposts as you’re building or before repainting. Hang verses around the house—power of words speaking LIFE into a space. Pray through each room before you move into a new place & make it a regular practice as you clean. (a dedication and cleaning out of sorts). Check out this mind-blowing experiment on rice plants that proves the point!
Treat your home as a holy place. Guard it from things that might tarnish that sacred ground. Do you allow destructive influences in (people, TV, internet content, language)? (e.g., certain movies/activities we didn’t allow)
Discipleship is all about attachment/relationship to God. We are connected to Him by a bond that is not sever-able. Our behavior or choices may AFFECT that relationship but it never dissolves it. The same is true of healthy parent/child relationships. The way we model this to our children necessarily influences/affects how they perceive their relationship with their Father.
You know how every home has its own smell? Your childhood home or your grandparents’ house was instantly recognizable by its scent. Our homes should have a certain spiritual aroma as well, that’s recognizable when people enter.
2 Corinthians 2:15-16 – For we are a fragrance of Christ to God
How can our homes teach us to love those in our family?
So many ways! It’s here we should feel safe to be who we really are, so those we live with see us with bed-head and in all our various moods.
Home is where we learn to practice FORGIVENESS. GRACE. SACRIFICE. GENEROSITY. SERVICE. GRATITUDE. CELEBRATION and APPRECIATION.
Think of all the ways we model these things to our children — teaching them how to relate to others outside the home. The way you treat your sister/mom reflects the way you’ll treat your wife. When you watch your mom & dad interact, argue, be affectionate, work together….you’re learning how to do marriage and what to expect from the opposite sex. When you tangle with a sibling and have to work it out later, we learn how to forgive/or apologize.
We learn how people are different from us and how to appreciate what they bring to the family.
We learn how to pull our own weight and take responsibility/contribute. We learn about give & take and supporting one another even when it’s inconvenient (attending his tennis match or her soccer game).
We grow up at home watching how others GET treated and learning how to treat others. We take these lessons out into the world with us, for better or worse.
Your kids are learning how to be a person from you. What lessons are you teaching them—even when you think you’re “not teaching?”
How do our homes help us to love others?
While we may think of our homes as OURS, there is a sense in which they of course don’t belong to us at all. We might pay the mortgage or rent, but in a Christian worldview, our dwellings and everything in them (including the people!) belong to God.
Your home is not for your use alone. There are so many examples of hospitality in scripture! Some cultures are better at this than others. Middle Eastern cultures are known for their hospitality. Here in the American South, it’s a known thing called “Southern hospitality.” Some people think this arose because of the prevalent religious beliefs of the region—which compelled church members to welcome strangers.
Check out Rosaria Butterfield’s book, the Gospel Comes with a House Key.
Our homes are for welcoming others. How often do we do this? What might this look like?
Neighbors, strangers, students, family, friends, new members at church, missionaries, …..
Host a small group/study/discussion group
Host playdate for young families
Make your house the “place to be” for your teen’s friends —food, interest in them, games, etc.
Volunteer to have the youth group over in the summertime
Do a holiday gathering
Have a new family over from church once/month
If you have extra space, host an intern or exchange student for a few weeks
Don’t save your nice stuff “for later”
Jennifer Roback Morse (Love & Economics and the Ruth Institute): asks Where is the “real world?” Instead of being some imagined political or economic institution, She says the real world is at home. This mundane world of ordinary chores, ordinary joys, ordinary problems…this is where any personal property bears fruit…If our domestic lives and our relationships aren’t satisfying, if our home life doesn’t work, if our “economic theories” don’t help us make sense of life’s inevitable difficulties and disappointments, then our theories have failed us.
If home is where our most important relationships are formed and where we learn what love IS, what it feels like and looks like, the more time we spend there investing in & fostering these things, the better off we are! (& the more successful/peaceful/loving/bonded we will be). That’s what Morse is saying—the big, demanding world (in the name of economics) would take all of us if we let it. Our children are more important than that. And so are we.