A house is not a home. A house is not a home. A house is a house, and it may be lovely to look at and fine to visit, but a house, by itself, is not a home. What is the difference?
Let me tell you a tale of two houses. These are the best of houses, these are the worst of houses. See if you can tell me which is a home.
One of those houses is straight off the cover of Architectural Digest. Its floors gleam with fresh wax; its walls are bright with unspotted hues; its drapes, its paint, its furnishings are all color-coordinated, with not one clashing item. Tasteful accents are here and there, pretending to be random but actually carefully placed, not one centimeter to the left or the right. In this house, the climate-control system balances temperature, humidity, particle count, and the ozone level. The windows are specially treated with an electron layer that repels dust and haze both inside and out. The lighting is on sensors, so that as the day darkens, selected lights come up, slowly and gradually, keeping a soft glow in the room no matter what is happening outside. In fact, it little matters what happens outside, for the room is controlled, sealed off.
Across a carpet, on which, mysteriously, no footprints appear, stands a group of people. Their clothing coordinates with the decor of the room. They are elegantly accessorized, their teeth line up in perfect smiles, and their hair is styled and shaped. They are speaking with one another, but very carefully. Very cautiously. Cool; calm; and collected. They remind you of the answer to the old question, “How do porcupines hug each other?” “Very carefully.” That’s one house.
The other house is straight off the cover of Antiques Road Show. Its floors, so far as we can see them, could use attention, particularly where the dog’s toenails have scratched. Its walls have on them some small grimy hand-prints, about so high, and its furnishings are a mixed bag of early orange crate and later K-Mart. Its drapes sag a little, its paint is cracked here and there, and where the magazines have been piling up, there is a coffee cup, half empty, and a pizza box, half full. It’s a little dark, as one of the light bulbs is burned out, and the other is hidden by someone’s sweater, pitched over the lamp in a hurry to go answer the phone.
On the other side of this room I see some people talking. It seems very animated. It’s loud; in fact, it’s an argument. They are raising their voices and waving their hands. One of them has her hands on her hips and is giving it the old foot-stomping effect. And another is shaking his head as vigorously as his old neck will allow. Sort of tense over there. Heated. Stressful!
Which of these houses is a home? Truly a home? I will not ask you which yours is like. I know which one mine is like; even though my wife was born with a paintbrush in her hand and remodeling dreams in her head, I know which one my house is like. For I know where home is. Home is where the stresses are brought and are dealt with. Home is not a museum-like perfection; home is where the issues of life get fought out, but they can be resolved, because home is where somebody loves you. Home is where somebody puts up with you. A house is just a shell, a showplace, a facade; a home, as the poet Robert Frost said, is where, when you go there, they have to take you in. A house is not a home. Hear the Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley, “It takes a heap o’ livin’ to make a house a home.”
God wants to give us a home. God wants to give us what we need to make our houses homes. That’s what God did when He chose to come in Jesus Christ and make His home among us. A house is not a home; God wants more for us than a house. God wants to give us a home.
I
A great many of us get busy building our reputations. We are very careful about our images. We want other people to think well of us. We want to be esteemed in the community, respected in the family, regarded by our neighbors. We want to build a reputation. The trouble with that is that it is a lot like building the house from Architectural Digest: a nice place to visit, but nobody can really live there, because real life is full of stresses and contradictions. Real homes have smudges on the wall.
David, king of Israel, decided one day that it was time to build his reputation. David got it in his mind that he would create a monument by which others would recognize him. Oh, he didn’t put it that way, but that’s what it was. David decided that it was time to build a temple, a house for God to live in. And he even got the OK at first from God’s preacher, proving that not even ordained heads get everything right, just in case you didn’t already know that! But God overruled, for God saw what was really going on.
Now when the king was settled in his house, and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him, the king said to the prophet Nathan, "See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent." Nathan said to the king, "Go, do all that you have in mind; for the LORD is with you." But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the LORD: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the ... leaders ... saying, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?"
David wanted to build a brand spanking new house for God, and all of a sudden God says, No, I don’t want it?! Now what exactly was wrong with David’s building a house for God? Why would God forbid this man after His own heart?
God saw that what David was after was a monument to David. This house of God that David purposed to build; it wasn’t for God, it was for the king’s reputation. It might have had God’s name on it, but that was just a convenient cover-up; it was really all about David building a facade. And a facade is not a home; it’s not a place where you can live. A monument is not a home; it’s not the real you. It is designed only to impress and nothing more.
In the 18th Century Count Grigory Potemkin was one of the favorites at the court of the Russian Czarina Catherine the Great. Potemkin was always currying favor with the queen. He found that the queen only wanted to hear good news. She wanted to believe that her people were happy and blithe and loved her, ta da, ta da. So whenever the queen announced travel plans, Count Potemkin would go out into the countryside ahead of the queen’s procession, and he would take just shells, just fake buildings, and would prop them up. He would hire some peasants and put them in nice clean clothes, so that when the czarina came by, these perfect people would wave cheerfully in front of these nothing buildings, and she would be impressed. How well my people were living! What a fine job my government is doing! The only problem was that the Potemkin Village, as it was called, was all shells, just fronts and facades, nothing inside. It was lovely to look at, but it wasn’t real.
Our lives can be like that too. Like David, we decide to do something dramatic and spectacular, and we convince ourselves it is for God. Maybe we decide to be extra generous this Christmas; we’re going to give some really nice gifts. That’s not bad in and of itself. But who is that really for? The recipients? Or ourselves? Maybe we decide that this year we are going to give to missions, we are going to serve a meal at a shelter, we are going to sing for the homebound. And that’s great. That’s fine. But is it for them, or is it for us? Is it reputation building, or is it a heart of compassion?
For God says, “I don’t want show. I don’t want empty nothings. I don’t want decorator show-houses. I want you. I want to live with you and in you. Monuments I don’t need, particularly since they are monuments to you. I don’t want a house; I want a home. And a house is not a home.
II
Don’t build this house, God said to David. And not only because it would have been a monument to David, and not a temple for God. But also because that’s not God’s agenda. God’s agenda is not building houses, but homes. God’s agenda is not building structures, but people. God’s agenda is not filling institutions, but filling spirits. We invest ourselves in big dreams and plans, the noble works of our imaginations; but God invests Himself in lives, hearts and souls. God builds not houses, but homes.
Listen to how God told David; it’s a wonderful play on words:
... the LORD will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. ... Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me;
It’s a play on words. The word “house” is used in two different ways. David says, “Lord, I want to build you a house, a place to live, walls and a roof.” God says, “No, David, I don’t want you to build me a house, a place to live. Instead I want to build you a house, a family. I want to give you a lineage, a heritage. That’s the kind of house-building I want to do. I want to take the raw material of human beings and make them into something fine. I want to take the sorry state of humanity and shape that. David, forget about the cedar and the ceilings; forget about the stone and the slate. Come see what I am doing, David; I am giving myself to your son and to your son’s son and to your daughter, and to your daughter’s daughter. I am giving myself to your house, David, but not to a house of brick and mortar. I’m giving myself to a home of flesh and blood. Remember, David, a house is not a home. And I am building a home.
This year, you’ve said, I’m going to do Christmas right. This year, I’m going to get my cards mailed on time, I’m going to put up the tree sometime before midnight on Christmas Eve. This year, whatever it takes, I am going to get my presents bought and wrapped, I am going to get my wife something other than snow tires, I am going to give my husband more than excuses. This year Christmas will be done right; I am even going to find a Furby. And, oh yes, I’m going to do the church thing right too. I’m going to get to the services, I’m going to attend the class parties, I’m going to support the children’s Christmas play. Don’t worry, Lord, I’m coming to your house. I’ll be there if it kills me!
But God says, you don’t understand. I am not looking for crystalline perfection; I am looking for love, messy though it may be. I am not looking for an exquisite Christmas, with every item in place. I am looking for real, rough-edged men and women, into whose hearts I can come. The Lord wants to be in our hearts and in our homes. He wants to be in the lives and in the homes of poor, lonely, distressed, and sinful people. He wants to be among those whose houses are not perfect, and neither are their lives. He wants to settle down with those whose floors sag, and so do their spirits; with those whose windows are grimy, and so are their souls.
God’s agenda is people, making a home for Himself among people. God’s agenda is lifting up the fallen, binding up the brokenhearted, healing the wounded, forgiving flawed. God will not be impressed with Christmas trees or bows or ribbons; but He will bless us if in the rough and tumble of our lives, we find a need and fill it. We find an itch and scratch it. We find a weary heart and comfort it. We find a hopeless mind and fill it with imagination. We find a lonely life and fill it with love. We find a wandering soul and bring it home. God is always about: building lives. Making homes, not just houses; making people, not monuments.
III
For, so says John the evangelist, there was a day when God came to His own home, but His own people would not receive Him. There was a day when He came to live where He belonged, but those to whom He came turned Him away. They were too perfect, too Architectural Digest. But to those who trusted Him, to those who knew their houses were not in order, were Antique Road Show, to those who received Him, to them He gave power to become His own. Men and women, hear all the mystery and all the wonder of eternity in this one majestic sentence:
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
The Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us. His ordinary, fleshly tent. Jesus did not come to a decorator showroom; He came to a rude stable behind the inn of Bethlehem. Though all the heavens were His, He chose to make His home among our imperfection. It is there we see His glory, full of grace and truth. Has your heart prepared Him room?
Your life does not have to be perfect; in fact, it cannot be. It will not be. It is a lived-in life. You cannot fix it. You cannot clean it. You cannot make it good enough for Him. It’s not possible! And yet, look, He is full of grace and truth. That means, He wants to live here, mess and all! That’s the kind of Savior we need, one who will take us just as we are. Has your heart prepared Him room?
The Word became flesh and made His home among us. Jesus did not grow up in the palaces of privilege. He grew up an obscure child in an ordinary village in a third-rate province in a dusty corner of the Empire. A little like your street or mine. Though the mansions of eternity were His, He chose to make His home among our imperfection. It is there we see His glory, full of grace and truth. Has your heart prepared Him room?
Oh, I know where home is. Home is where the stresses are brought and are dealt with. Home is not a museum-like perfection; home is where the issues of life get fought out, but they can be resolved, because home is where somebody loves you. Home is where somebody puts up with you. Home is where Jesus Christ, the word made flesh, has come to dwell, for me, for you. Home
Yes, it does take a heap o’ livin’ to make a house a home. Has your heart prepared Him room? O come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for Thee.
