I am a realtor. I see it all the time. People want heaven on earth.
Oftentimes I blame Martha Stewart or HGTV or Pinterest. All those magazines. All those shows. All those websites. All those ideas. To live well is to live out of a Pottery Barn catalog, or maybe inside the closest Ikea.
I get caught up in it, too. Though my affections are less stainless appliances, granite counters, monstrous master bathrooms and cavernous closets and more along the lines of farmhouses and small towns and wind blowing through my hair. I am sometimes tempted to pat myself on the back for being so much less materialistic than those obnoxious couples on House Hunters.
I am not like that, I say.
But I want what I want. Perhaps as non-mainstream as it is.
Last month we drove right down the middle of Illinois. And I melted. Oh, how I longed for a life God has not given me and in a place he has not put me.
I dream of a white, foursquare farmhouse with an eat-in kitchen and window over the sink so that I could look out over the acres of corn and see the tornado coming (yes, seriously). Of course, this house would be on the edge of a small town where everybody knows each other and crime is nonexistent. I would spend my days working on the farm and my evenings sitting with my husband on our front porch. It would be heaven on earth.
But God has not called to live in heaven on earth, or what I perceive that to me would be heaven on earth. He has called me to live here. Where I am now.
My longings to tweak my exceedingly blessed life into my own personal hand-crafted heaven so easily pull me away from my true calling....to love him with my whole heart and my neighbor as myself and to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with my God.
As for the farmhouse in the cornfield? Well, heaven can wait.
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