What Makes a Home Beautiful?

Feb 16, 2011 by desiringvirtue

Occasionally I decide to pick up an old, but treasured post from the dusty shelf and share it with you once again. Maybe it is the first time you have ever read it, or maybe you have seen it before. In either case I pray that it will be an encouragement to your heart today as it is to mine. Enjoy!

September 8, 2009

As we get ready for another move I find myself thinking about how I am going to decorate my new home. It seems like with each move there is a temptation to buy more “stuff” to make this home look nicer and more beautiful than the last one. I’m thinking about how the furniture will fit in the new living room and whether or not we need to swap some items on Craigslist for others. I’m thinking about new ways to save space because our new apartment will be much smaller than this one is and about what kind of decor changes I want to make in the future.

It feels like as a young family your “style” is always changing as you slowly get to throw out the “hand-me-downs,” and move up to the “slightly used” furniture you find for a deal, and then again move up the coveted “new” furniture and decor. It is bound to be years… maybe even decades before we start buying new furniture. For now we are content to swap our damaged things for slightly less damaged things at a really great price!

As women it is our God-given duty to care for the home and with that assignment comes the responsibility of making the home a beautiful haven for our family and guests. Sometimes I wonder if we put too much emphasis on the “beautiful” part. As I look around at my living room I have to admit, it is anything but a picture from a magazine. There are many things that I wish I could change about it, but simply can’t. As I visit other people’s homes I am tempted to envy their ability to furnish their homes with lovely and unique pieces or I am amazed by their decorative genius. I begin to think that I am doing a poor job creating a beautiful and heavenly atmosphere for my own family and guests. Soon I am making lists of things we “need” and things I need to do in order to remedy the obvious problem that our home is.

It is then, as I am making my list, that the Lord begins to convict my heart. He begins to reveal the layers of envy and jealousy that are the pillars of my desire to have a “beautiful home.” He then shows me the pride that is the foundation of my lust; the desire to be the woman that other women are jealous of and desire to be like. He reminds me of the millions of people around the world who don’t even have a roof over their heads and how one less flippant purchase a month could feed a poor soul who is dying of hunger. He reminds me of Kris and Chelle Stire who are in Albania serving the small, but vibrant church there. They gave up their right to a “beautiful” home and chose a glorious one among the beautiful souls they are winning for Christ. I am reminded of how much more money I could be giving to them and to my own church for the furtherance of the gospel. How retched my soul must look to my Savior when it is filled with selfishness!

It is hard to judge how much of my desire to have a beautiful home is a result of selfishness. Surely much of it is from pride and envy, but a great majority is simply the desire to please myself and my own tastes. Let’s face it, I love beautiful things! My personal style is a sort of “Country-Clean-Shabby Chic” (or at least this is what I want my personal style to be). As of yet, I have not been able to achieve my “dream home look” so every time I pass by a beautiful piece of decor or see something I like in a magazine (ehem… Pottery Barn!) I feel like I need it. After all, I just want to make my home a beautiful and inviting place!!!!

I realize that making your home aesthetically appealing is not wrong and I truly hope that my home is and will be a warm haven for my family and guests. Unfortunately, I honestly believe that when I focus on these desires they take an unhealthy and ungodly role in my heart. The more beautiful my home gets and the nicer things I have, the more I begin to love this world and the things in it. The more I am comfortable here, the less I desire heaven. Yes, I want my family to be proud of their home, but more importantly I want them to yearn for their heavenly home; I want them to yearn for Christ-I want to yearn for Christ!

I also know that the more I desire to be seen as the woman others envy, the more I am promoting an atmosphere of sinful jealousy between myself and other sisters in Christ.

Yes, I want my home to be an inviting and comfortable place for my guests, but I also want their focus to be directed to the Lord and not my fabulous home decor.

God gives to each in a different manner. Some have more income and are able to spend more money on decorating their homes while still being faithful to give sacrificially to the Lord. To others he entrusts a very little teaching them to rely on his beauty and comfort rather than the possessions they can accumulate. But all of us must fight the temptation to call this world home and invest too much of ourselves in it rather than God’s Kingdom. As I get older and my family’s income increases I know that our home will get bigger and become more aesthetically pleasing, but my earnest prayer is that Richard and I would never put those things before our service to our King, and if necessary we would choose poverty over unfaithfulness.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. -Philippians 3:20 & 21