Every House is Built...

I built my first farm beneath the spreading branches of a fir tree at the edge of the garden when I was about eight or nine. I used a hoe to scrape out a creek to wind amongst the ferns and gathered sticks to make a field for animals to graze in. I picked rose hips off the wild rose bushes for sheep, tiny burs from the burdock for hens, then added a cow I cut out from the Ward's catalog. My brother built a barn and a house out of scrap lumber. My farm was complete.

Or was it? I needed a family.  It wasn't until I carried the family I cut out from the catalog that my farm became a real farm. I loved that little family. Years later, the tree still stands, but the posts are gone. I have no idea what became of the house, or barn, or the precious family I carried back and forth in a shoe box.

My husband and I built a house together when our children were small. It grew board by board and so did the memories. Beth lost a doll inside the walls . . . years later she remembered she'd put it there for safe keeping. Her two-year-old brother poked nails down a knothole. My husband found them years later, a strange mountain of rusted nails alongside the foundation under the house.

Our children are grown now-all six of them. They've gone on, some live in houses built long before they were born, some to build houses of their own, others to share the home they grew up in with their parents. The happy boy who stuffed nails down the hole has a brand new house in heaven that his Father in heaven built for him.

Hebrews 3:4 says: ". . . every house is built by someone but He who built all things is God."

Looking at my family, I see God’s hand working there—He is still building.   Our Creator loves families, they're important to Him.  We can leave our burdens concerning our families in His tender care.  We can trust He has their best good in mind, and in this there is peace.