My husband and I recently rewatched some of Downton Abbey – a longtime favorite series that we had not revisited since its initial release over a decade ago. In one of the very first episodes, father and estate owner Robert Crawley contemplates Downton in the distance and says to his mother, “I have given my life to Downton. I was born here, and I hope to die here. I claim no career beyond the nurture of this house and the estate.”
At first glance, this statement and the reality of it may seem a bit, well, pathetic. To give your life to a fancy estate? To make a place your life’s work? Surely we must claim higher callings, aspire to greater vocations than to maintain property — and especially a property that may come to ruin in short time. After all, who can control what becomes of a place after you must inevitably leave it?
Place hasn’t always been so low on the priority list, however. God provided elaborate designs for a temple He knew would not last longer than a few centuries (Exodus 31; 1 Kings 6-7; 2 Chronicles 3-4). He, through the prophet Nehemiah, instructed His people to settle into a foreign land from where He knew He would deliver them. Was all of this a waste of time and effort and expense?
Or could it be that somehow, in some way, the keeping of these places served to both bring glory to God in the places His people lived and orient their hearts toward Him?
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My family lived and worked at a Bible college in Southern Africa for nine years. In that time, we settled well into the campus home we were assigned, gradually updating peeling tiles in our bedroom and painting the kitchen. Over the years, we added a larger patio space for hospitality and a second bathroom for our growing family. We planted an indigenous garden in front and the clivias a local farmer gifted our daughters under the avocado tree.
While we never claimed any legal ownership of that small piece of property, we felt a deep conviction that it was our home. It was something to cultivate and care for, a place to foster peace and welcome.
Our family moved back to the US six months ago, and the process of slowly taking apart that dear-to-us home is still fresh. As I walked through the emptying rooms, fingers grazing the walls where the shelves full of books once stood, I wondered who would come next to this home, and would they love and treasure it as we have?
Or will the gardens become overgrown, the raspberry patch unrecognizable? Will they enjoy the hydrangeas all summer and the proteas in winter and the clivia in the spring? Will they sit on that enlarged veranda with friends on a summer night and watch the lights twinkle over the city below?
I don’t know. And at times, that unknowing of how that place — a sacred place to us — will be cultivated past our existence in it has been crushing. Will the time and work and money we invested into this property be wasted? As Christie Purifoy asks in her book Placemaker, “Is it possible to care for a place with open hands, always ready to give it away like so many fishes and loaves?”
Maybe there is a kind of generosity in leaving well a place we’ve loved. I like to think of the new tenants stumbling across the blooming clivia in the spring, or the fresh strawberries peeking out through the weeds. I can imagine their enjoyment of the extra bathroom we thoughtfully designed, or her plants adorning the open shelves in the kitchen.
The cultivating of this place led to our generous use of it, our efforts to make it a place of welcome and rest. Perhaps in caring for this small plot of land, in pursuing beauty and peace in a space God gave to us, we are planting purpose for those who come after us. What if the very foundations of peace, joy, and hospitality that we sought to lay down last far beyond our existence in a place?
There is also an aspect of faithfulness in caring for the physical place where God had put us. In restoring something old and broken down, we are imaging the glory of what God is doing in us and in the world. This side of our transition, we do not regret any of the time and resources we invested into making that home beautiful and welcoming. Like Ben in Elizabeth Goudge’s Pilgrims Inn, tearing away old wallpaper to reveal frescoes and shouting “To the glory of God!”, there is deep, meaningful work in beautifying spaces for the purpose of God’s glory.
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We have now settled into a new home, a fresh-to-us piece of this earth for which to care and cultivate. We have swapped our avocado trees for maples, our barred windows for central heat, our large patio for a wooden deck. Even though we’re halfway across the world from our old home, much of it is the same. We are still creating a whole space where our family can live together in peace and harmony, where we can grow in faithfulness to God and live in obedience and joy.
This home is a place where we can pursue peace and restore fellowship, where we can relish beauty and develop creativity. And from this home, we welcome others with warmth and kindness and can go out with courage and bravery to love the world in which we live. Our homes are indeed holy places. This side of heaven, our work in keeping these places we call home is sacred, even while we wait for one we will never have to leave.
