This business of homemaking can be overwhelming. In fact, if we really contemplate what it is to make a home, it’s far more challenging than managing one.
Managing a home involves schedules, lists, and plans … making a home requires grace, understanding, and listening.
Managing your home is important and good … making your home is imperative and godly.
Let us never be guilty of allowing managing our homes distract us from the far more significant task of making our homes.
Today, let’s spend some time in Proverbs and explore four attributes of a godly home.
Generosity
Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner, but blessed is he who is generous to the poor. Proverbs 14:21
She opens her hands to the poor and reaches out her hands to the needy. Proverbs 31:20
Practicing generosity- both to those inside and outside our houses – is a foundational component of making a godly home.
Humility – Proverbs 15:25
The Lord tears down the house of the proud but maintains the widow’s boundaries. Proverbs 15:25
Holding loose the gifts God has given us, both tangible and intangible, and using them to point to Him is the mark of well-made home.
Intentionality
By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches. Proverbs 24:3-4
She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and portions for her maidens. Proverbs 31:15
She puts her hands to the distaff and her hand hold the spindle. Proverbs 31:19
She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet. She makes bed coverings for herself; her clothing is fine linen and purple. Proverbs 31:21-22
When managing your home is viewed as a tool to make your home, the priorities reflect a well-made home. There is nothing wrong with lists or schedules or routines or menus or cleaning plans … as long as they are not more important than treating those in your home with grace and kindness, more valuable to you than spending time in the Word, more worthwhile than listening to the latest “knock knock” joke your five-year-old has made up.
Consideration for Others
She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Proverbs 31:27
We’ve talked before about the idea of submission beginning with being polite and what polite parenting looks like, the best part of a godly, well-made home is this: The people who live there are genuinely interested and concerned about others. They esteem others ahead of themselves.
This well-made home is much harder work than a well-managed one! But it’s my sneaky suspicion that if we can successfully make a home, the management part will come with far less complication and strain.
How do you prioritize home making over home managing?
Fantastic, practical and right now I feel like I am the Prover 31: 15 woman. That is why I am loving the freeing feeling of it’s okay to not have “everything” in place all the time. I do believe that God will be working on me with that “idea” for many more years to come.