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In today’s episode, we are going to be thinking about our vision for home and homemaking. Home is a central part of our lives. In fact, it is one of the commands that humans were given at the dawn of time: we were to go into the world and create a home out of it. We are commanded to be homemakers, to participate in the process of homemaking. We will discuss what it means to make a home and why that is so important. Then, we will be talking about some practical applications that come from having the correct theology of home.

Links:

Habits Guide
Desperate by Sally Clarkson and Sarah Mae
The Spiritually Vibrant Home: The Power of Messy Prayers, Loud Tables, and Open Doors by Don Everts
Daily Grace Co. Podcast – Women and Home

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Welcome to A More Beautiful Life Collective. We know that in the hectic hurry of everyday life, it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters. This is a moment to pause and realign your focus on the one who gives us peace and rest. We are focusing on discipleship, productivity, and homemaking as we live with eternity in mind. This is the place where you’ll learn to create a life you love and cultivate your heart for God.

Hey everyone and welcome back to Season 1 Episode 6 of A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast. We’ve been discussing habits, and as September comes to a close, we are turning our focus to home, families, and our households. In today’s episode, we are going to be thinking about our vision for home. Home is a central part of our lives. In fact, it is one of the commands that humans were given at the dawn of time: we were to go into the world and create a home out of it. We were commanded to be homemakers. We will discuss what it means to make a home and why that is so important. Then, we will be talking about some practical applications that come from having the correct theology of home.

Don’t forget that you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. If you haven’t yet, would you consider leaving a 5-star rating and review for the podcast? This helps new listeners find the show. You can also visit my blog – the link is in the show notes – for additional posts and episodes. You can leave a comment on today’s episode if you have any thoughts, and I’ll respond to it in the next episode to keep the conversation going! Now onto the episode.

A Home Made Beautiful

In the beginning was a garden, lush and vibrant. There was abundance and life. There was a Father and his children. Connection. Intimacy. A family. A home.

Eden was the perfect picture of home. It was a place of belonging. A place of kindness, beauty, and the gentle calm of a life well lived.

With the fall, the dreams of a home made beautiful were dashed.

The second law of thermodynamics states that our world is always moving towards disorder and decay. Sin has forced the whole world into a system that is bent on spiraling out of control.

As we’ve been discussing habits, it’s crucial that we understand that habits do not occur in a vacuum. We are not individuals that are solely concerned with self. Modernity has caused us to think that we can operate alone and still function. We can’t. That is a lie.

So as we think about the habits, routines, and rhythms that we desire, we have to understand that we are not just focused on the personal habits and disciplines that we feel will help us achieve our goals. We also are concerned with the habits that help to strengthen the fabric of our families and communities.

We have to be concerned with our households. We must be people who make a home. We are all homemakers.

What is homemaking?

One of my earliest memories involves the magic of Christmas. Every year, we had a host of traditions that would create wonder and excitement for me and my brothers. One of my favorite memories was the morning of Christmas. We would wake up wearing our special Christmas pajamas and instead of quickly racing downstairs, we had to wait up in our rooms until our parents got up and set up the presents. They would make their coffee and then set out each of our stockings and gifts in our special place in the living room. After turning on the twinkling lights, they would give the okay for us to come down the stairs. They prepared a place for us to create beauty and excitement for us.

I wonder if God felt the same way when he set to work on the first day of creation. With powerful words, he spoke the world into being, with broad brushstrokes of light, color, warmth, and vibrancy. He made everything perfect, a place prepared for a people he loved. As he welcomed Adam into the world, I wonder if Adam displayed the same wonder-filled awe as I did as I walked down the stairs on Christmas morning. It was beautiful and special. A home created by a Father who loved him.

In an episode of the Daily Grace Co., Jean Pollock Michel talked about the meaning of home. We think of homemaking as something domestic, with the job description of a house cleaner and maybe a cook for your daily meals. Grocery shopping, meal planning, laundry, cleaning schedules, and home management come to mind. This would be the description of Homemaking 101 if you asked the world. An old-fashioned homemaker in pearls and a dress calling in Beaver Cleaver to dinner from playing outside. However, Jean states that really God is the first homemaker. The description given in Genesis is one of God preparing a home, a habitation, for his people that is safe, abundant, and life-giving.

A homemaker is someone who makes a place of belonging for others. They participate in the same process that God did in the beginning, where they create order out of chaos. In doing so, they attempt to make a place where everyone they love can live fruitfully and abundantly. In fact, one of the first commands given was this “God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28). Sally Clarkson says in her book Desperate, “This concept of subduing an area doesn’t mean to rule over it in such a way as tame it, but the actual context of the word means to exert your influence over something in such a way that it becomes subject to your leadership and becomes productive and fruitful.” The command given to all of humanity is to rule over the place where we are and turn that place into our own garden, to go and form our own Eden out of the chaos. This is what a homemaker does.

We recently visited a miniature golf course close to home. The man who created the course bought a piece of land that had nothing on it in the middle of nowhere. One of the people we visited with mentioned how, for years, it seemed like a barren wasteland as the golf course was under construction, with strange cavelike concrete arches spread throughout the acres of land. However, slowly the vision came to reality as the owner planted trees, shrubs, and flowers to make a flourishing garden in the midst of rural backwoods farmland. That’s a picture of subduing in order to cultivate something that allows for growth. A picture of who we need to be.

Our homes are the places where we are loved for, cared for, and allowed to be who we truly are. We are seen and provided for. We can fill up and we can pour out for others. A homemaker is a person who creates this place for our households, for the ones that we love.

Expanding our definition of our homes, homemaking, and our household

Importantly, home is not just limited to caring for our immediate family or any kind of notion of the American nuclear family of the 50’s. In The Spiritually Vibrant Home, Don Everts describes who your household is. He says that it is anyone who lives under your roof and anyone who might be a friend, extended family member, or part of your church community that feels like family. We all can remember those friends from high school that could walk into your home and it just seems like they were one of the family.

I had a friend growing up that we specifically bought food for because we knew that she liked it. Every time she would come over, she would head for the fridge. She knew where everything was and would help herself. In our modern individualistic world, it can seem like that would be an overstep. That she would be entering into my space without respecting the fact that what was in my home was my family’s things, not hers. That some boundary was crossed. But, what we find in scripture is the opposite idea. We are commanded to break down the barriers of an isolationist culture. We invite people into our homes and say (wholeheartedly believing it), “What is mine is truly yours.”

In the Bible, when households are talked about, it is never just the immediate blood-related family. Abraham’s household was close to 300 men. He had an army at his command! In the New Testament, there were several instances of the household including not just the family, but the servants and other workers in the household. We need to expand our modern definition of family and households to mimic that of a biblical understanding.

When we expand our vision for a household to include all those people who feel like family, we start to create a vision for what our homes could be. I believe that this vision really mirrors what the church is supposed to be. As you expand your vision of home as being a place for all of these people, you can see the mighty responsibility and impact that comes from being an intentional homemaker.

Think with me for a second – you can even grab a pen and paper and write this down:

Who is your immediate family? List the names.
Write down anyone who lives under your roof but may not be close family.
Then, write down all the names of families that may not live under your roof but they come to your home quite a bit (or you go to theirs).
Then, write down friends, coworkers, and church family that visit you regularly. The people who feel like family.

This expanded list is who you are creating a home for. It includes so much more than just you and your kids. Consider now whose list you would be on, and then you can think about other names they might have on their lists.

As the households are connected, you can see how the church is formed. We are all interconnected households that hold fast to the truth of the gospel. We encourage one another and lift each other up to serve one another and God with everything we are.

We are all homemakers

As you imagine this, I want you to consider what kind of home you are making for your household. As I said before, we are all homemakers. We are not just limited by sex. Women may be the ones who spend more time at home (or not). Women may be the ones who take over certain domestic responsibilities, but women are not the primary homemakers. Whether you work full-time in the home or out of the home, homemaking is a partnership that must occur between people who are in charge of the household that subdue their domain and cultivate it into a place that makes much fruit for God.

If you are single and live alone, you can be a homemaker who produces fruit for God in your home. If you are married, you are working together with your spouse to produce fruit. If you are an empty nester, you are working to produce fruit to bless others and glorify God.

No matter what your situation is, you are uniquely suited to use your current situation to serve others in your household and glorify God in the process. For someone who is single, it may mean connecting with coworkers at your house after work and creating a space for lonely people to meet. If you are married and in the thick of raising littles and figuring out family life, that may mean inviting others into your home to give godly examples for your kids. If you are an empty nester, it may mean seeing those lonely singles and those frazzled parents and using your home to be a place where they find rest for their souls.

We all can be homemakers.

We all need to be homemakers.

The world needs more homes that provide peace, rest, and connection, and we could be the people who give that very thing to others.

A vision for a life you love

So what type of home are you making?

In Desperate, Sally communicates her own vision for home. She says,

“In this culture of quick satisfaction and gratification, many of us have never been taught to believe that someday we will have to give an account to God, face-to-face, for the spiritual, emotional, and moral work that we steward in the lives of our children. The souls of our children will last for all eternity, and if we believe scripture to be true, the way we shepherd them will undoubtedly have repercussions far beyond our lives here on earth. As I searched Scripture in my own walk as a young mom, I began to catch a glimpse of the profound meaning imbued by God into the home environment. My identity as a mother would be wrapped up inextricably in the very place in which my moral character would be formed. My home, then, became my kingdom over which I longed to rule well as I was crafting lives, my own children, for His glory.

This kingdom of home is the place of refuge, comfort, and inspiration. It is a rich world where great souls can be formed, and from which men and women of great conviction and dedication can emerge. It is the place where the models of marriage, love, and relationship are emulated and passed on to the next generation. One of the great losses of this century is the lost imagination for what the home can be if shaped by the creative hand of God’s Spirit.”

What a beautiful picture of the power of home. Of the place that home can be if we set our hearts to it. I’ve been thinking about what this podcast is all about, about how we can create a more beautiful life. At the heart of it is the idea that we are creating a life that we love that will impact others for God’s kingdom. By figuring out our family puzzle as Sally Clarkson would say – the way that we can fulfill God’s purposes for us in the circumstances we are given – we can show others the beauty and deep joy that comes from serving God with our lives. In a shallow and anxious world, this kind of life is strikingly different and amazingly attractive. When we “fit our heart to agree with God’s heart”, our desires more fully align with his word. When we have suffering, we can overcome it because of the joy set before us.

Our home is a place of refuge and comfort. A place where we can inspire our children and all those that we invite to pursue God more fully. Truly what could be a more beautiful calling for our life than that?

Over the next few weeks, we are going to be discussing some rhythms and routines to create a home that inspires, provides comfort, and develops into a place of peace for you and your family. I hope you’ll join me next week for the next episode! If you’ve enjoyed what we’ve been talking about you can check the show notes for links to my blog and all of the resources mentioned. Please leave a 5-star rating and review for the podcasts to help our community grow. And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and the blog so you never miss any of the great things that are happening. Now go and build a more beautiful life.

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