A House Can Never Be a Home
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also
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This is the sign on top of the microwave at our Airbnb. I understand the sentiment, but perhaps they should consider tossing it in a closet before the guests displaced by the firestorm that destroyed their city thirty miles to the west arrive. Talk about a wry sense of humor.
I guess I could also hide the sign. Maybe I should light it up in the Solo Stove sitting in the backyard. Wouldn’t that be poetic.
Somehow, I haven’t brought myself to move it anywhere. Each day I wake up before the crack of dawn, normally after #3 begins to stir around 6:15 am. I try to give the Mrs. a few more minutes of kid-free peace before the day begins, stumbling out to the kitchen to find the button to start the coffee. As the machine starts to do its thing and the smells of the sweet, caffeinated elixir begin to waft through our dark Airbnb, the reality of where I am and what has happened settles in once again like a fog.
Maybe it’s more like smoke.
As our family has walked through these past two weeks Abbey and I have noticed how our energy and mood oscillates with a roughly 24-hour period. (Insert joke about Fourier analysis here.) In the morning, hope abounds. The many problems we face seem tractable. No permanent place to live, no access to the things in our home, no plan for the day—no problem. Surely today will be the day that we’ll solve them, or at least move closer to the solution.
Then the hours drag by. The positive vibe fades. We’ve come to refer to 4 pm as depressed o’clock. Sometimes it’s closer to 2:30 pm. Maybe it has something to do with the half-life of the coffee.
As we’ve continued to process all that has happened, we’ve come to some painful conclusions. Yesterday was the first time I was able to get up to the house to see the damage firsthand after nearly two weeks of a mandatory evacuation. Not that we really needed to see it for ourselves. Even without the first-hand inspection, we’d gathered enough information from the various news agencies, official announcements, and the sobering CalFire damage assessment map to understand the depth of the destruction that has occurred to our town.
It all brings me back to that stupid sign. What is the difference between a house and a home anyway? I’ll tell you what, it ain’t love. It’s just not that simple. Home is where your treasure is.
This whole ordeal is teaching me things. Not the kind of lessons you want to learn, mind you, at least by personal experience. It doesn’t matter. Life teaches you them anyway. One of these lessons has been the sobering reality of our weakness.
The most obvious aspects in the wake of a tragedy like wildfire is our weakness compared to the power of nature. But it really is just the tip of the iceberg, highlighting the ways we overestimate and oversell the control we have over all the aspects of our lives. Oh how easily our sense of entitlement sneakily grows to the point that our lives are full of expectations and thinly-veiled demands.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
When Jesus exhorts his listeners to store up treasures in heaven rather than on earth I don’t read this as some sort of woo-woo insurance policy designed to help protect us from loss. What I read at the core of his command is to be mindful of where we are storing our treasure.
In other words, a house can never be our home.
Instead, the house, like the rest of things I have—my family, my health, my community, my belongings, my career, or my reputation—is a gift to be stewarded. It does not belong to me. I’m not entitled to any of it. What I’m called to do is to care for it well.
I think I know now why I haven’t taken that sign down. I leave it up as a reminder.
My home is where my treasure is. And that’s not in Altadena, California.
What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Got a thought? Leave a comment below.
Your ongoing 'conversation' with the bnb sign is as darkly hilarious as anything out of Poe.
Your vulnerability is a great strength. Thank you for sharing so openly of your challenges. With prayers and all best wishes for each day being better than the previous. Step by step...
What an interesting story, edifying lessons and reminder on what truly makes a home! That the transient house we live in this world, no matter how magnificent, pales in contrast to our permanent heavenly home which no fire can burn. Everyone who has trusted in Christ cherishes this home every moment, with a longing to be there soon. Exactly, the same sentiment is expressed by Paul, saying: "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 2 Corinthians 5:1
Thanks for sharing even this, just like I have benefited from you by other professional blog posts, being in the same computer science field with you, prof.