My own fireside

Home Sweet Home!

In our medium sized community, an experiment was begun.

Folks reminisced of a day gone by—a day in which neighbors sat on covered porches and greeted each other—a time when children could play throughout the neighborhood without fear.

People decided that the reason they didn't enjoy the friendliness of the past was because of the design of their homes. Somehow the decay of neighborhood relationships was blamed on having garages in the front of the home.

So the city planners brought some clout, and perhaps a bit of public money, into creating new "communities" with the garages positioned in the rear—access from the back only, with porches facing the "streets" which no one traffics, except to get to the back so they can use their automatic garage-door openers, and then close them and enter into their new homes.

I often drive by these experimental subdivisions while on my way to the store and other errands. They look just as deserted as any other modern home community in our area. But these look even more forlorn because those porches, the ones meant to be full of people and bustling activity, are so incredibly empty.

Wright's Bradley House, Kankakee, Ill.

I was enjoying a “home improvement” show recently and learned an interesting fact about the famous architectural designs of Frank Lloyd Wright. He designed homes for privacy. The front room of the house was for company; and the remaining rooms in the rear were for the family—exclusively.
 
I am not at all impressed with our current emphasis on total openness. I do not believe that one of our crowning glories is the over-use of social media, and the tendency for everyone to feel an irresistible compunction to intrude into other people’s personal business.

We have become a nation that drinks deeply from the gossip monger's cup—our minds as well as our speech are rife with the very venom of this disease. It is so prevalent that there is almost no place to withdraw from it—even if you do not care to hear about the alleged misdeeds of others, they are flaunted on billboards as you drive to the store, unabashedly displayed on magazine racks at the checkout stand, and shamelessly paraded on the television while you work out at the local gym.

George Orwell’s invasive “Big Brother” has finally revealed himself. Privacy is passé—drawn curtains are immediately assumed to be concealing some deep, dark secret. No one is allowed the privilege of life outside of the public eye. Everyone is supposed to be "social" or at the very least “socially minded”. We are supposed to put superficial relationships above every other thing—almost as if the very relationships themselves are to be worshiped. We submit to the en vogue experts for the answers we need. And in contemporary, anthropological-based Christianity, relationships have long ago trumped holiness as the goal of a holy life.

If John Bunyan’s classic Pilgrim's Progress was written today, it would be booed, if not out rightly rejected, by the American Church.

Christian flees the City of Destruction

Pilgrim ran from the City of Destruction. He ran from his wife and children (while pleading for them to follow). He ran with his fingers in his ears!

It wasn't about how well he "got along" with others, no, it was about his life’s purpose—the goal to win Christ!

And the journey presented him few companions—he refused to put friendship above that holy aspiration of winning Christ. He kept on the road when others turned aside—antisocial behavior indeed!

The old Negro spiritual goes like this:

Jesus walked
This lonesome valley;
He had to walk
It by Himself.
Nobody else could walk it for Him,
He had to walk it by Himself.

Faith can be encouraged by the fellowship of others, but it can only be deepened when we are alone, in those trying times when the only One to whom we can call is Almighty God Himself.

“The man who would truly know God must give time to Him.” ― A.W. Tozer

Our neighborhoods look and operate differently than in the past for many reasons—the central one being the departure of our society away from the cohesion we felt by the almost universal adoption of Judeo-Christian values; but also because people desire and need privacy—and our homes are one of the few refuges left where we can enjoy this solace. Why are so many clamoring to give this freedom away to unworthy onlookers?

Privacy is an ingredient of family life that is non-negotiable. It is understood in the contract given to Adam at the first wedding—that the man would leave his mother and father and cleave unto his wife. It is only under the cover of privacy that human relationships can truly flourish. In the Bible, a recently married man was released from many normal obligations in order to bond with his new wife.

When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken. (Deuteronomy 24:5)

The beauty of God's creation!

How many of us have seen this played out in the lives of those in any manner of public service or ministry. The palpable strain on a family living in a "fish-bowl" existence is often too much to bear. "Preacher’s kids" are notorious for bowing out of Christianity altogether due in part to the pressure of constantly being "scrutinized".

My dear son Ryan received a long-awaited package in the mail. It was full of the tools of a serious entomologist—a net made especially for the capturing of all sorts of insects, small and great, pins and pinning boards, and a jar for putting the wonderful creatures to sleep humanely, and to eventually display.

He captured a monarch butterfly while we were on a family outing. He watched it as it tried to move its wings inside the net. But it was so hard for him to want to kill the creature—he is awed by butterflies, in particular.

Beautiful Monarch butterfly

But he waited too long. After a few days in the net, the wings of the butterfly showed wear and tear, since the delicate dust that covered it had been rubbed off a bit. During the pinning process, more damage was done.

In attempting to preserve and enjoy the beauty of the butterfly, he had blemished it. It sits on its pinning board, a lesson learned.

In our clamor to share every insignificant detail, every function, to explain and divulge everything, we are destroying all that is precious about our lives. There are things that only God should know—not just the ugly and sinful, but also the wonderful, the soft and tender, and the intimately lovely things about our persons that are reserved only for Him.

My Own Fireside

My own fireside!  Those simple words
Can bid the sweetest dreams arise;
Awaken feeling's tenderest chords,
And fill with tears of joy my eyes!

What is there my wild heart can prize,
That doth not in thy sphere abide,
Home of my warmest sympathies;
My own, my own Fireside!
My refuge ever from the storm
Of this world's passion, strife, and care;
Though thunder clouds the sky deform,
Their fury can not reach me there.

There, all is cheerful, calm, and fair;
Wrath, malice, envy, strife, or pride,
Hath never made its hated lair
By thee, my own Fireside!

Whate'er my future years may be,
Let joy or grief my fate beside;
Be still as Eden bright to me,
My own—MY OWN FIRESIDE!

Taken from McGuffey's Juvenile Speaker.