A House Is Not a Home

A house is just a shell, I know.  A structure isn't a home. 

So why should anyone weep over rotting wood, and leaking roof?

Yeah, why should I? 

I went home to the nondescript town where I grew up over the Easter weekend to commemorate my mother's 8th death anniversary with three of my four siblings and their families.  I usually don't make time for this occasion because I want to remember my mother's life, not her death.

For the past seven years, only my sister Aie and brother Matt (and family) made the annual special trip (two of my brothers are abroad) to our town, to be with the church people who were my mom's family when all her children left home.

Why Easter Sunday?  Mom died on Good Friday and it seemed like a good idea that her death anniversary be on Easter.
So every year, Aie, Matt and brood would prepare breakfast for less than 100 people, paint Easter eggs for the children, and bring flowers to mom's tomb in the cemetery.

This year, one other brother came home for the graduation of his son, and wanted to join Matt and Aie. I decided to join them as well.

Mom's little church is wonderfully grown so we painted eggs and prepared breakfast for 150 people!

 

Inside the church, while I listened to the choir, my life quickly flashed before me: I was a little girl singing alto, facing the congregation (my mom among them) who would play a huge part in my spiritual growth; a few steps away was our house—sturdy, standing tall, well-appointed—playing host to every activity of the church (and of visiting pastors and missionaries) and clan reunions.

Now on this year's Easter morning, I look around the small church in my youth—it is no longer small, it is taller, sturdier,  prouder, and bursting at the seams with people who love God.

Outside, our once tall, sturdy, proud house and bursting at the seams is, ironically, going the opposite direction. A hapless victim of two ferocious floods,  it is now literally just basic shell and structure—empty, except for shelves upon shelves of books, and memories. 

My memories are crystal clear and intact in my mind.  Alas, a house cannot be the same.    

But though I weep for what the rundown house will soon be—a heap of useless rubble—I will always see that two-story wooden dwelling in my heart as a repository of God's endless grace.

It housed a family grounded on one faith and on the Word, and many other people adopted over the years. It was a witness to joy and sorrow, failures and successes, and bade good-bye to children who grew up and moved on, and to parents who grew old and passed on.     

Just as people wind down, so do houses.  There is momentary weeping for what is lost.  Psalm 30:5 “. . . Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.” 

The Easter of our lives will come gloriously and we will be welcomed by God Himself into our heavenly mansions, which will not rot, decay, nor fall apart.

So now I will let that temporal old house rest in peace. Meaning, this is my last post on it.  

In heaven, every house is a home.