home as ministry

February 17, 2021

home as ministry

I thought I'd write about some of my reflections as I have pondered the past year and mapped out the one that is still blooming.

As I have tallied memories--good and bad--of 2020, I was overcome with one particularly unexpected blessing that the past year held.

Home.

It was a year fraught with grief and difficulty, yes, but its days stoked the fires of my love of home and the making of it. I suppose this all had to do with my move from my childhood home, the process of settling into number 668, the experience of planning for our first place as newlyweds, comparing what home means to the both of us. Along with the past year's numerous stay-at-home orders, of course.

Together, all these realities of 2020 motioned me toward the safety and sacramentality of home. So I thought I would share some thoughts and pictures about this year of (ordinary) homemaking.

I have realized, in these fleeting months, that the slow, quiet and often thankless work of crafting a home is deeply life-giving to me. I glean gladness and peace from stocking cupboards with seasonal fare from the market, lighting spruce and amber and balsam candles on my old farmhouse table, smelling that first press of coffee in early morning light, vacuuming every nook and cranny of the suite before mopping the hardwood floors, hearing laundry tumbling as I await fresh linens for the bed, filling shelves with memorabilia and things I hold dear, adding to my collection of storied coffee mugs, washing dishes in elbow-deep frothy water and lemon soap, taking notes in the margins of cookbooks as I try new recipes, calling mom as I attempt a new baking technique, filling pitchers with flowers all year long, setting a table for an elbow-to-elbow gathering of guests. The litany of everyday life!

In a time where being at home is not only normal but mandatory, it was a blessing to realize I genuinely delight in homemaking.

A Hygge night (a celebration of Danish coziness!), before heightened restrictions this Winter.

Terminology and tensions

For those of you who have qualms with that word: I understand.

The word "homemaking" seems impossibly gendered, which bothers me, as I have witnessed many men so eagerly and intentionally take part in the making of a home. I happen to be marrying one who is enthused by the idea of beautifying a space, filling it with people, and making it a space of joy, rest and gathering. I really don't believe domesticity is reserved for women alone.

That said, I do think there is something wired in women which inclines them to notice beauty, and compels them to infuse their corner of the world with it. Home feels like a sacred place for this to happen. It is a key space that we are called to steward.

Perhaps this isn't your hesitation with the word "homemaking." Rather, you might wince at how Eurocentric and/or hegemonic homemaking culture is. To be clear: I fully recognize the privilege associated with the concept of homemaking. Not everyone has the possibility nor the resources to "manage a home", let alone even have a home. I can too easily take this for granted. Likewise, I know that what I consider to be "home" is heavily influenced by my own cultural precepts and presumptions.

I don't have all of it figured out in this arena, and I wrestle with these tensions. But I have to believe that the mindful stewardship of home is elemental to the creation of a just society. By creating a home in the spirit of simplicity, sustainability and generosity, are we not contributing to making a more equitable world?

Likewise, I trust that as we partner with God in the process of homemaking, He invites us to challenge cultural defaults that are handed to us about our households.

We can challenge the notion that "more house" equals "more home." We can push back on the temptation of materialism and hyper-consumerism. We can choose to have an open-door policy and leverage our homes for the benefit of others, instead of viewing our address as a private domain and kingdom for self (read more about my take on hospitality here). We can bring others into the messiness of our everyday homes, countering the societal pressures of privacy and control and illusions of perfection.

I have become increasingly convinced that we can learn to view our homes as the ground zero of our work and ministry, instead of the space where we solely find respite from them.

Fajita night with friends, at Number 668.

I love this space so much.

My food photography is lacking, but this was a hit - chicken and biscuits!

Paul, helping me set up at Number 668. Bless him!

Chili and cornbread is a great meal for sharing!

A theology of home

As a Christian, I understand home as a crucial theological and spiritual concept.

Last year, I read Rosaria Butterfield's book on Christian hospitality, The Gospel Comes with a House Key. It was a very impactful read. Butterfield conveys a thorough biblical rubric for come-as-you-are hospitality. Her thesis is that we ought to view our homes as the frontline of discipleship and Christian living, and a fundamental tool for evangelism and blessing others. I find this vision so compelling.

She writes:

“Radically ordinary hospitality is this: using your Christian home in a daily way that seeks to make strangers neighbors, and neighbors family of God.”

Amen!

When I think of homemaking, I also think of the beatitudes, the series of eight blessings spoken by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew. In this passage, Christ lays out how God takes our broken world and turns it upside down to set all things right in His Kingdom.

I can't help but think that much of His calling for us to live fully in Christ, verse after verse, starts between the walls of our homes.

In fact, our homes are the place where we learn to live out the beatitudes, and subsequently infuse the world with them. Our homes thus become a space where the riches of the Kingdom of God become ours.

The beatitude which especially jumps to mind is found in verse 9.

Blessed are the peacemakers, we read.

I want nothing more than for home, the very place where I live, to be a vessel for peacemaking.

I want the (figurative) walls between you and me to come crashing down within the (literal) walls of my house.

In our homes, we can cultivate a culture of unity and rest with and amongst tenants, housemates, family members and guests. We can put our differences aside and lay down our life for the other, fostering a sense of sustained peace. We can fashion our spaces for intimacy, mutuality, and worship. We can conceptualize the table we share as an equalizer -sacred ground where "strangers become neighbors, and neighbors become family of God."

The home thus has a tremendous potential to become a space of shalom.

If you aren't familiar with the term shalom already, here is my best attempt at defining it. Shalom is a Hebrew word meaning complete peace. Do notice it does not just mean peace nor rest, but holistic, full peace--a feeling of completeness, rest, wholeness, harmony, contentment, delight and flourishing.

Shalom is the serenity of Eden, a place where we benefit from full enjoyment of God, others, our environment, and ourselves.

I want my home to be such a place. I want those who enter--whether my family, my community or myself!--to taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 38:4).

Imagine if we purposed to create homes where all agreed that the veil between heaven and earth seems just a little thinner.

God, sanctification, and everyday tasks

I think it is too easy to view our daily tasks around our homes as fundamentally unimportant-- but I am learning to steer clear of this way of thinking. We serve a God of details, who cares deeply about the marrow of our everyday lives.

If anything, it is not often in the mundane and routine elements of our days that sanctification unfolds?

How refreshing to view housekeeping not as a burden nor an obstacle to my calling and ministry, but as a means by which God is making me more holy, more like Him!

In a recent read, I fell upon the following truism which is oft quoted in faith-based social justice movements and organizations:

Everybody wants a revolution, but no one wants to do the dishes.

I am not entirely certain who it is attributed to, but some suggest it originates from the Catholic Worker Movement. And I love it.

We so often focus on the grand gestures, the "fireworks moments" of the Christian walk. For those of you who, like me, grew up in the "do BIG things for God" youth ministry culture and movement, you know what I am talking about. We think of our calling as something which must be grandiose, which must contribute "heavily" to building God's Kingdom.

But what if Kingdom-minded works are also the small, menial tasks where we are planted today?

When we focus so much on the "revolution" that we disregard or trivialize the washing of dishes, the folding of laundry and the making of beds... we miss the opportunity to partake in God's revolutionary work in our hearts--the kind of revolution that yields increased joy, humility, diligence and selflessness in a heart as hardened as my own!

When I get caught up in the thinking that taking care of my home is not holy nor sacred work, I fail to see the way He shapes me and molds me through the most commonplace parts of my days.

A modest corner of Number 668. Nothing fancy, and God knows
I would change many things about it, but it's home and it is good.

How the life-giving home equips us

Don't hear me saying that we ought to be hermits that hide from or forsake the world around us. My point is rather that our homes are a place where God sanctifies us. When we purpose to make our home a place of profound belonging and flourishing, we can cross its threshold and step into our communities, cities and world better equipped to pursue the way of Jesus. In the same vein, one might argue that it is quasi-impossible for someone in a dysfunctional or unhealthy home setting to thrive in his or her ministry outside the home. How could one serve the world in a purposeful manner if the very place they return to drains and discourages them?

To put it simply: it is obedient to love our homes well!

Bird by bird, I am learning to be faithful in this ministry of home (yes, ministry!). This is no small thing--especially when everything in me is tempted to believe that it is unimportant. But I ought to remind myself, always, of the home's potential to be a place of becoming.

Home shapes us.

When I think of my own experience of home, I recognize how blessed I was to have grown up in a life-giving environment. Home was always my very favorite place to be, and I know my parents toiled to make our little brick house a haven of rejoicing, gathering, memory-making and rest. I have no doubt this has made me the person I am today.

Friends, where we are planted is important. The work we do between our four walls is important.

Growing up, my mom always told me to "let my roots run deep." Only now, at the cusp of marriage and just a couple years into creating a home away from that of my childhood, do I grasp the intention required for biblical rootedness. Letting my roots run deep where I am today (not just when I own a house, have enough savings, or have a family!) means rolling up my sleeves, learning to inhabit this space, and doing the work required to care for it well. It means treating my home as ministry.

No matter the season you find yourself in: know that you house, rental, dorm room or basement suite (!!!) is so much more than just an address. Your home is a gift to steward, and a canvas through which God reveals His wondrous beauty and goodness to you, and to others.

Homemaking is an invitation, a way to partake in God's work of giving others a glimpse of His Kingdom, where everyone will dwell together in unity, order and gladness.

Isaiah 65 suggests that this is exactly God's vision of the New Earth (check out verses 21-23... and the sweet promise we will not labor in vain!).

And in Jeremiah 29, we see the prophet conveying the same idea whilst speaking to an exiled people:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

This is so compelling, so gobsmacking to me! The God of the universe values the thoughtful inhabiting and caretaking of a space by its dwellers.

Beyond this, He considers this as the way to care for the welfare of my city.

Homemaking, in the language of God, is a powerful means by which our cities and our world are cared for.

As you hang laundry upon the clothesline, bake a batch of cookies for your neighbors, place a basketful of hats and gloves and wool socks by the front door come winter, create rooms for a growing family or for loads of guests, fill walls with paintings or light taper candles to remind yourself of beauty... may you remember this is Kingdom work.

Author and co-founder of L'Abri, Edith Schaeffer, says it perfectly:

"If you have been afraid that your love of beautiful flowers and the flickering flame of the candle is somehow less spiritual, remember that He who created you to be creative gave you the things with which to make beauty and the sensitivity to appreciate and respond to His creation."

Making a home is no small task, but lest we forsake the holy and grace-filled work of cultivating an environment of shalom for all who enter.