I hope you all have enjoyed soaking in the first handful of chapters. They really lay the foundation of why we should create a lifegiving home for our families. Today we are going to dig into chapters 3 & 4. Here we will see how grace and the very Incarnation of Jesus can be woven throughout our homes, our attitudes, and our service to our families, creating an atmosphere which sings of His grace.
A Symphony of Grace {Chapter 3}
We can choose to be the conductors of our own homes...taking the lead by establishing the atmosphere through serving.
Every home is going to be different in this respect. Sally shares her particular symphony and I just love how she has laid out the priorities for her own home inside chapter 3.
Welcome
"Adopting the attitude that every arrival at my door is a divine appointment for me to care for others, to understand and listen to them and to serve them a cup of cold water in Jesus' name, changes the way I see both my home and those who come in it."
Safety
"Having a place where we can shut the door to the rest of the world--where we can be ourselves, wail together, make mistakes, and live through seasons of growth--has been a grace to us. The closed door allows us to work on our inadequacies, our limitations, our personal struggles without the eyes of the public viewing our personal lives."
Knowledge and Wisdom
"Every table in our house has a place underneath where magazines and books are piled for the reaching. Baskets of books sit at the end of couches for grabbing spare moments. Literally thousands of books, magazines, audiobooks, devotional writings, and biographies, collected little by little, are scattered throughout every room in our house. Each one has been chosen as a source of inspiration and mind-filling strength."
Beauty
"Beauty is more than just pictures on a wall. It is also about colors that bring pleasure, smooth and nubby textures that reward the touch, the wafting fragrance of food in the oven that keeps us sniffing appreciatively, the comfort or excitement of music on the stereo. Beauty is found in the way we light the rooms, the books we open again and again, the way we arrange furniture and set the table."
Relationship
"Relationships are the core focus of celebrating life together in a place. The desire to create spaces for friendship, companionship, and fellowship influenced many of our home choices--even the furniture we bought, where we placed it, and how we used it. Grouping comfy couches and overstuffed chairs in front of the fireplace--not the television--is another relationship-based choice."
Nourishment
"Eating is not just about filling our bellies--or at least it wasn't meant to be. There is something about preparing food and sharing it that enhances relationship, builds community, even fosters spiritual connection. I believe every meal should be a celebration of life itself as we break bread and enter fellowship together."
Rest
"Bedrooms are not just for sleeping! Ideally bedrooms should be special places where each family member can pull away from all the stress, escape the demands, and rest, cry, journal, and dream away from the eyes of others. Bedrooms give sanctuary to souls and should be outfitted accordingly."
Which one of these stands out most to you to implement...or is there an element not listed here you'd like to add?
In my home, an important piece of "music" that adds life is to have a wide variety of high quality books and a ready source of good quality art supplies. Many of my children love to read and all love to create, color, paint, draw, craft in some way.
The Rhythms of Incarnation {Chapter 4}
Up until I read this chapter by Sarah, I never really thought of my home in the way she explains. I nodded in agreement as I read her explanation of Facebook being a distraction and her experiment to deactivate Facebook for 2 months makes me want to do the same (which isn't really possible for me since much of my work is done there!).
But, her idea to not check anything internet related before breakfast, now, that I could do -- and really, I should do. My first impulse is always to grab my phone or hop on the computer first thing to start my day and to be fairly honest...I don't love doing that. I would rather begin my mornings quietly or at the very least, presently, at home.
I love what she says here,
"As the days continued, the quiet grew. That one departure from Facebook empowered me to resist the Internet in general, and a hush grew daily within me as I rooted my consciousness once more in the world of touch, sight, sound, and breath. I found myself newly aware of the rhythms of light and dark. I felt a hush that beckoned me to look out my window and learn again the different moods of the pines in the dawn and the dark and the half light."
That sounds so incredibly lovely to me. As a mother with a house full of children (and 3 dogs), quiet is in short supply. But, subconsciously I add to the "noise" by starting (and often ending) my day on Facebook, or the Internet in general. It's no wonder I struggle to find peace in my own soul!
When I constantly feed myself from Facebook, I listen to all-the-voices. Consequently, I find it harder to hear God's voice.
She goes on to say,
"If we want to embody the life of God in our homes, we need to understand what God intended human life to be, and we also need to be aware of what distracts us from that intention or diminishes it in our lives."
And one last thing that really wraps up her heart (though the entire chapter is excellent):
"While there are certainly benefits to the world of technology, and while social media has in many ways increased connectedness, there are also profound ways in which the overuse of virtual reality and technological media is causing us to become mentally and emotionally absent from the present world of incarnational action."
I love working on the Internet -- I have for years! But there is always a downside to too much of anything and too much technology can throw us into information overload as well as giving us a constant expectation of instant gratification. We no longer know how to slow down because we've become accustomed to getting what we want and getting it now.
So, my take away is that I am going to stop checking my phone or the Internet first thing in the morning. I want to breathe in the stillness as much as possible before the demands of all-the-things take me over.
What about you? In what way can you quiet your soul and return to being present with the people in your home?
Christin Slade
