Miracles.

You think of me as a broken record, no doubt. I feel like I keep saying the same things over and over again. Someone said to me the other day “There should be a TV show about you! You are so interesting—always traveling and designing and creating and telling funny stories—I would watch it!”
It was a nice comment, but I had to respond in truth, “Oh, I think people would get bored of me pretty fast. I don’t do much new stuff.” Yeah, I may have a life full of those things she just mentioned, but that’s about it. My life is full—of the same things. Over and over again, constantly, I do the same things. My short-lived audience, I am sure, would say, “She’s traveling again?! Been there, done that, not interested,” or “Holy cow, woman! Can you stop rambling about something obscure?!”

The truth is, No. I can’t stop rambling about obscure things.

I wouldn’t know what else to ramble about.

With that introduction out of the way, I have more thoughts on houses. And Jesus. And ministry.

If you continue reading and say at the end, “Well, I have read that before,” don’t say you didn’t know what was coming.
Ha.
: )

Let’s just go ahead and blame it on the duck. That’s right. Let’s forget the fact that I was having these feelings before I saw the duck, but she seems unaware, so let’s say she was the culprit.
Yes. In my brother’s back yard lives a duck. And I watched her all week.

She’s not a pet duck. She’s a wild duck. In she has flown and there she has stayed. Why? Because she has babies on the way. (It should be mentioned, as well, that she is the second duck this year to land in their yard and hatch the wee ones. They think it is because they are the only house in the neighborhood that doesn’t have a dog, so they have gladly welcomed the expectant mothers.) In good fashion of moms of all kinds, she has feathered her nest and is keeping her babies warm while patiently waiting for her coming brood.

 

What a little doll.

Isn’t that cool? She sits there all day. I never once saw her leave. She must have during the night, but during the day? No way.

And as I watched her I couldn’t stop thinking about nesting.

No, not that kind of nesting. I promise you I am having no thoughts or desires towards children at this point in my life. So maybe I should say “Feathering the nest” rather than nesting, because, truth be told, I can’t stop thinking about houses (I told you this topic was coming).
About designing houses, remodeling houses, doing house projects.
Why this came out of nowhere, in such gale-force intensity, I don’t have the foggiest idea. All I know is that seeing the duck sitting on a fabulously feathered nest didn’t help the cause.

God also did not help in calming the harried thoughts. Have you ever noticed how sometimes God answers your thoughts and prayers you didn’t know you prayed? Naturally, since I could think of little else last week,  I found there before me, on a curb, in a posh neighborhood, an answer to a prayer I had not consciously uttered.

It must have been that big garbage day because there, waiting for the dump truck, was this baby.

I am not kidding you.
It came home, needless to say.
See, isn’t that just the way of God? To fulfill a desire you hadn’t really even talked to him about?
Thank you, Jesus.

So, with a week of watching the mother duck in cooperation with making plans for a new sweet table, my mind ruminated on “home” a lot.

I have said it before and, guaranteed, I will say it again, I love the concept of home.

I have been blessed, or really—I have been placed in responsibility—my whole life because I lived my days in lovely homes.

Homes that God has provided (I will tell you those stories some other time). And we all know that if God provides it, we are accountable TO him to use it FOR him.

Ok, so I have lived in lovely houses. And I have both ministered in and have seen ministry happen—and have been ministered to—in lovely houses. By all kinds/to all kinds of various people.

It goes without saying that how you have received love and grace will be the predominant ways you show love and grace, which I think is probably why houses are on my mind frequently: because I have met Jesus in homes.

Not really in churches, not really in missions organizations, not really in classrooms, but in homes.
I am thankful for those of you who have met Jesus in those places I have not, which is a beautiful showing of their purpose, too, it’s just not the case with me.
That being said, I have a really hard time divorcing ministry from home-life; I don’t know how to do it any way else.

Homes, nests, Jesus, and curbside-found tables all make me pray, “Jesus, how do I walk in this? How do I most effectively share you with the world through my home?”

I proposed in my last post that a person who is opposed to Christ and his Christians would not be able to continue that vein of thoughts if he was invited in to a Christian home and loved; shown mercy and grace; not preached at but truth lived to.

Why? Because ministry/sharing the gospel is local. Personal. Individual.

And it doesn’t get much more local than my kitchen table.
Truth be told, I think that’s where long lasting change really happens: in the watching of lives lived for Christ. Lives that have been miraculously changed by his hand.

I know this is true, especially for me. For instance, the one stand-out moment in my life where I learned about the nature of God’s generosity was shown to me around a dinner table in a tiny apartment in Switzerland, eating a dinner of horse, served in a ridiculously lavish fashion by my non-Christian hosts who, not only did I not know, I could not communicate with because we did not speak each other’s language. Still, there they were, overwhelmed that I was finally there, showing me more generosity than any Christian church display I have ever seen.

So, I know that’s where this happens; I could tell you stories for hours of how this has happened to me. I know Jesus is conveyed over biscuits and blueberry pie around finger-painting-and-play-dough-stained tables, so why my hesitation? Why is there something in me I cannot reconcile, propelling me into a life solely devoted to this? Why do I have this nagging fear that in the back of my mind, somehow, it won’t work, despite the fact that I am the product of it working?

A lack of faith.

Sadly, it’s true.

I find myself praying for things, yet not really believing God will do it. Yesterday I was praying about an upcoming situation, yet at the very same time bracing myself for nothing to come of it.

How ridiculous.

But in this cycle is where I find myself. So just call me ridiculous.

In my thoughts about houses last week, I wandered onto a website about all of the mansions on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. I know it.
Talk about obscure.

But take a look at this manse!

18,000 square feet.

Listen, I have lived in lovely houses, but none quite that big.

I can look at that and go “What a waste. How ridiculous, what good could come from owning a house that big?!?!” and I may have been having those thoughts when I was stopped in my tracks by this picture.

 

That’s the gate to the house.
Is that not the coolest thing you have ever seen?!?!?
I want to know the story behind it. I want to know the miracles that built that house.

Lightbulb.

There is the answer to my lack of faith.
There is why I cannot see how God could, will, and wants to use me and my silly house, why he has chosen to give me the responsibility of a lovely home to use for his kingdom:

Because I am not expecting a miracle.

This is what bridges knowing you possess the tools and seeing the fruition of your labors: Believing that a miracle is coming. Believing that if he has called me to be accountable, he will pull all the pieces together, which really, is there anything more miraculous than God using you and what he has given you to work a miracle through?

You know, I think about that duck. There she sits, day in and day out, on those eggs. Through all the hot heat of July, through the almost-catastrophes brought on by a two-year old little boy, through all the celebratory booms of Independence Day, there she sits.

Why?

Because she is waiting for her miracle.

If ducks have thoughts, I guarantee she has never thought, “But what if there are no babies in these eggs…”
Not a chance.
She has recognized the signs, she has found something to trust in (a yard without a dog), she has gone and feathered her nest, so now she waits. She waits in her nest, doing what she is called to do (keeping those babies safe, warm, and protected) expecting her miracle.

My sister-in-law sent this picture through.

Way to go, mama duck. Way to do what you were called to do.

I guess she got her miracle.