A Texas house, a Nigerian house, and God's glorious house

There are a lot of things I like about my house. The living room, with its ambient lighting and built-in bookshelves. The built-in storage cabinets in the bathroom and two of the bedrooms. The view off the back porch. But there are a lot of things I find myself wishing it had. A basement, both for tornado safety and to store the stuff for my husband's projects and experiments out of sight. Plumbing that doesn't leak and windows that aren't drafty. And that it were rodent-proof!

This is my dear colleague's house, provided by their church where her husband pastors, when I visited in 2016. It's a duplex, so she, her husband, and her two younger boys (her oldest is at college) live in half of this. She told me about the time they had to go buy all their water because a dead animal contaminated their well.

Now they've been asked to move to another church, in a part of the city that is notorious for drug-addicted youth. She hasn't seen her new house yet, but in a poorer community, she's preparing for it to be smaller and with fewer amenities than what she has now. She wrote, "Some people have been sympathizing with us, thinking it is not fair to move us to such a place, but where else can God display His power? We want to make Jesus known through people and places people despise. Please, pray for us, we have promised God that even if we will live in a manger as long as it is His work and He is the one leading us, we will do it. Humanly speaking, our flesh long for good things of life, e.g., good house, car, clothes, etc., but it is not about us, but Christ. 'Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fail and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.' Habakkuk 3:17-18"

She convicts me so much that I worry about my temporary home, when we are working each day on our eternal home in the Kingdom of God, where fire will test the quality of each one's work (1 Cor. 3:12-15). Lord, make me as faithful as this daughter of Yours.