Kingdom home
Home is the only place in the world any body would like to thrash in to at the end of the day. Due to long days of travel I many a times happen to stay in Hotels. Some time very expensive, some times not so expensive. Some times with latest electronic and sanitary gadgets with beautiful view out from the balcony, expensive drinks placed for your pleasure in the minibar, protein rich state of the art culinary delicacies available at your fingertips in “room service” menu. However just after a couple of days of stay every thing looks like a cold spaghetti, without juice it or any fun left. Infect some times within an hour or two you trend to mis the HOME! There are things to do, like swimming pool, cafeteria, Club House and Gym etc..but you feel left alone deserted craving from HOME. You switch on the TV and try to forcefully feel at HOME, intentionally surf on internet, spend time on social media sites, try what not?? But nothing replaces HOME. What is Home? Why do I mis it so much?
Our home is a small place with three bedrooms, a hall and a kitchen small enough to face each other and touch each other often while crossing each others ways. Big enough to find a corner and forget yourselves in your favorite Youtube video or a Facebook chat. No fancy electronics, fancy scented washrooms, centralized AC and far from comparison to the Hotels I get to stay when I am travelling. Then why does it make a difference when I am home? Why am I at ease, peaceful, pleasant, stress-free and accepted though I had to compromise time, TV, Sofa and many other things for others at home? What makes a HOME a HOME?
HOME is where YOUR own are together. HOME is where you can fight and still sit together and eat. Home is where you Love sharing your sofa, some times even your early morning pressure! Home is where overly salted food, less sweet coffee and early morning interrupted news channels – though every thing imperfect – sounds like we are ALIVE. HOME is relationships – some sweet and some irritating. Home is Love – some overly partial and some other overly practical. Home is fight – Some for fun and some for seriousness. What is do we need in this life? A Happy Home is a Happy every thing!!
On that note let me invite you to a mish mash walk of what a happy Home is like! What does the Bible say about a Home? How can we make our Home a really a wonderful experience of LIFE.
Being Nonjudgmental: Home can turn in to a living hell if everyone in it are competing to be judgmental. The head of the homme leads the path and rest of us just walk in that path. If head of the home is very judgmental and like to correct people in everything they do – life at home becomes a painful tragedy. Correction is good but not at a constant commentary type correction! That is very difficult to live with. Accepting people the way they are s the key to rule this issue out. Once the head of the home decides not to be Judgmental House turns in to HOME. All of a sudden the rest of the family will also track on the same path! Embracing the weaknesses, cultivating strengths out of those very weaknesses become the life style of the family.
Srinivas was forgetful of his mother Rama Devi’s instructions. Every time she tells him to do certain work He would forget and Rama use to scold him with words like, useless, duffer, dumbhead etc. He started believing and registering those words in his mind. In his tender age he decided he is a useless kid. When Rama realized what her child is going through, she started supporting him in his little jobs that she would give him to do and use to encourage him for completing those little Jobs. She started to identify the strengths rather than weaknesses of the child. Earlier Rama use to be judgmental of every thing Srinivas does but now she is more encouraging and walking with him in working at his memory. Since there is no judgmental attitudes passed on to him Srinu started undoing the previous registrations in his mind and started registering his strengths in his mind. At last the house became a HOME.
Adults also are a victim of the same attitude. We unnecessarily carry labels such as short tempered, naughty, loose, sober and what not. All the labels might not be negatively affecting us, but why labels is the question? Why are we associating people to some labels and identifying them under such labels which are most of the time some adjective – character type!
God’s word says we are all equal – fearfully and wonderfully made in the Image of God.(Gen1and Psalms). But the idea of better than thou, holier than thou attitude which is a consequence of low selfesteem, jealousy, insecurity make us proud and try to show to others how we are superior to others. We take refuge at judgmental attitude.
Each of us need to be content and satisfied at a resting place Jesus offers to us. We are his precious children. He likes us to transform into a true human being – as Adam was. Once we realize the purpose of a HOME – which is transforming us into true human being – we also will get rid of our own lower self-esteem, insecurity and all other attitude issues.
Being Nonjudgmental also mean to celebrate each other. Celebrating the person itself – no matter how weak, strong, beautiful, ugly, wise, dumb the person might be in your own eyes – just embrace and celebrate the person. He is a gift from God in your life. He is your family.
Freedom – Let the children speak freely at home, Let the adults exercise freedom at home, let them play, fun, fight, reconcile and do all of that on their own terms – which is called freedom. Home should be a place where people freely talk, share and express their concerns to each other. Freedom in asking questions, demanding answers and giving space to other members to refrain from doing so. This freedom within the boundaries of relationships and cultural upbringing set of values and reverence to the elderly forms the psyche of the children and maintains the psyche of adults. However all the value system and cultural practices must e within the boundaries of biblical understanding and world view. IT can not be overly individualistic that loses all the boundaries and at the same time it can not be overly group dependent to completely write off individual’s preference. Striking that balance is the reality of HOME.
Freedom to the girls and ladies of the HOME often is looked at in a bad light as if freedom to females is prohibited. Bible stands firm that both men and women are made in the image of God and His likeness – equally free!
A Home with freedom at it’s value systems raises free spirited individuals with choices made to be integrated with others at home. Individuals from such homes know what they want and why they want and they will not be easily carried away with distractions in life. A home with Freedom produces creative individuals rather than rot machines and well forced copy cats. Learning from others at home is a very good thing to do but adding ones own creativity fetches originality. A Free Home produces an original human being. The purpose of freedom is to make us Original, truly original. That’s the purpose God made us free and responsible of our own choices in his home.
Freedom shifts the responsibility of a man from a group to the individual though the group is very much involved in the process of making decisions. Let the families be a safe havens for free spirits.
Anjeze Gonxhe BojaXhiu was a free spirit born in 1910 in northern Macedonia and learnt to hear the voice of God only to lead her to India where she served God for the rest of her life and now called as St Teresa of Calcutta by Roman Catholic Church. It is the freedom of hearing the voice of God that made her what she is. Let our Homes be prepared to raise children with such freedom to hear from God and decide for themselves what God stored for them.
Relationships: we run back to Home – children after the school, men and women after the work, travelling members after the voyage we all run back to Home – and the reason is we find PEOPLE that LOVE us no where else but HOME. It is the relationships with the people of our home that decides our attachment to the home. I work with a lot of young people that never had a home. Home for them is the HOSTEL that they lived in. Some good experiences and some bad but that group of young people that were raised together in that hostel – where ever they are today their togetherness is HOME for them. They long to run back to their friends who might be naughty, rude, harsh nevertheless THEY are US is what these young people say. The reason is relationships and bonding that they developed from childhood. Our relationship with the family members decides what HOME is.
It is also possible to have a HOME in a home! That room of your mother, your sister or your brother or father where you really feel at home. The rest of the places of the same house are not as comfortable as that ONE area(for some people) of your House is! Why? Probably because you are comfortable with your relationship to those articles, items, bed, sofa or a chair and your companions that treat you the way you are! No strings attached.
A good HOME might turn in to just a house if we mess up our relationships. A shack of poorly furnished house can become a heaven called HOME if the relationships are sweet. The questions now for all of us is how valuable are our relationships to us? Are we nurturing and growing in our relationships?
In this small writeup I mentioned only three aspects of a Kingdom focused Home – With non judgmental attitude, Freedom and Relationships – that will help us to be a good custodian of the kingdom values falling in line with Christ’s value system. We will discuss more in the days to come.
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