How houses are built (and how they fall apart)

Sometimes all we need is one verse. 

Ya’ll know by now that I love my Bible. I’ll blab ’til I”m blue in the face that we all need to be reading our Bibles.  But lately I’ve been camping on the fact that  we don’t need to know much to “get” this life of faith. In fact, at a recent conference we looked at this:

Our aptitude for God’s word matters less than our attitude toward God’s Word. The most important thing is how we approach His Word. If you know one verse of Scripture you can obey that verse and memorize that verse and ask yourself what does this verse tell me about God? And then hold up that verse and look through it every single day and let it clarify the world for you. Let your world come into focus based on what that verse tells you. Sometimes we got so many verses rattling around in our brains we’re not using any of them. Whatever it is that you’ve got hold it up and look at it. Do it. Obey it. Pray it. Think about it. And look through it.

So here’s what I’ve been looking through, still trying to “get” it:

 A wise woman builds her house, but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands. (Prov 14:1)

I love this word-picture. I remember, when I was 10-years-old, we built a house. My dad did the building, but we all contributed. I carried 2×4’s and swept up messes and my brother drove nails and my mom did whatever Dad asked. I can still picture my mom holding up plywood while Dad shot it full of nails. (I also remember, on a freezing cold morning, when he nail-gunned his hand to the plywood. That was a day.)

But my mom was always there holding something up.

Can you imagine if she’d been doing the opposite? If she’d been walking around the house tearing down fixtures or taking a sledgehammer to whatever work Dad had just finished. Or now, can you imagine if I walked around our house with a baseball bat smashing windows and knocking over furniture?

A wise woman builds her house.

It doesn’t say “A wise woman builds her business” Or “a wise woman builds her church” or “a wise woman builds her friendship-base” or “a wise woman builds her blog.” All those things are wonderful, but our first order of business, ladies, is building up our house.

There’s a reason God’s put this verse on my heart. 

Because I need to be reminded.

Why is there such a constant temptation to build up everything except our homes? Perhaps because our homes are so mundane, so ordinary. The home is a humble kingdom, to be sure. It needs a queen who is small in her own eyes.

So if the woman’s not building, what is she doing?

Tearing down. How? With her own hands. 

How sobering is this? Woman, we have so much power. The words we speak, the attitude we embody, the choices me make a thousands times a day. Everything we do is either building up or tearing down our house. With our own hands. 

Am I creating order and beauty or chaos and confusion? Am I building up or tearing down?

A simple question to return to each day: Does this activity benefit my home and the people who live in it?

There are myriad reasons why houses fall apart. But this verse highlights the most important factor:

Our hands. We can blame society, peer pressure, culture and bad TV. But our hands are what build up or tear down our homes. Our words, our attitudes, the work we do each day.  So the question for us:

What are my own hands doing today? Am I building up or tearing down? 

{Friends, blogs, and businesses come and go. I want my house to stand. You too? Thanks for reading.}

PS In the middle of this post, Jeff and the kids said, “Mommy will you play with us?” You better believe I shut this laptop and we, all four, went outside for some serious playing!  Dutch dressed the kids — it was Beaver football in our front yard! Here’s a peak: