The House

Who understands compassion? How does it move us? How does it move others? What are its roots? Who really understands selfless love? Who can plumb its depths? When we touch compassion, when we experience selfless love – as givers or receivers – it transcends the rational, it is “other” than we are.

And so the story of the “house” is amazing to me. There are more details to it than I can hope to share in a blog post, or in a short story, or even in a book. How a man was touched by compassion and built a house so that a homeless man and his family might have a home; he built the house and he gave it to them – it cost them nothing. The story goes that as he was building the house that he lost greatly in the stock market and that his business failed, leaving him with but little to live on; any reasonable person would have finished the house he was building for the homeless family and sold it for money to live on until he could recover financially.

But he had made a commitment to build the house and to give the house away, and even though his own family was suffering he kept his promise, he kept his word. His friends thought him idealistic to the detriment of himself and his family – but he had had compassion on the homeless family, he loved the homeless family, and he was going to honor his commitment, he was going to keep his promise.

When the house was finished he made sure that it was completely paid for, even though it drained his bank account. Then, he withdrew funds from his retirement account and completely furnished the house. He also paid an estimated year’s worth of utility bills in advance. Finally the day came when he transferred title and possession to the homeless family, a family who would be homeless no more.

Five years had gone by since the family moved into their home. The man who built the house had moved out of state in order to find work to support his own family – those five years had been challenging, at one point he had been on food stamps, many a week he and his wife had been to food pantries. On a trip back to his hometown he wondered how the homeless family was doing – a family that was homeless no more; he decided to visit them.

As he drove down the street where the house was located he drove right by the house without recognizing it – at the end of the street, realizing he had missed the house, he turned around and drove back but missed it again. Turning around once again he slowly drove down the street looking for the address on the curbside mailbox. When he saw the address he stopped, parked, got out of the car…could this be the house?

The trees and shrubs in the yard were dead. The grass was dead. Windows were broken. The gutters were filled with debris and there were saplings growing from them. The screen door was off its hinges, the window screens were torn, some screens were still in the windows and some were on the ground.

He walked up to the door and knocked, a teenage boy answered the door, and the man recognized him as Adam, the couple’s older son. The son, recognizing his family’s benefactor invited him in.

Inside were holes in the walls, torn and stained carpet, and an overpowering stench indicating imbedded filth throughout the house. As the man peered from the living room into the kitchen he saw stacks of unwashed dishes, cardboard fast-food boxes, beer and soda cans covering one section of the floor, and empty liquor bottles crowning the trash can. Movement on the countertop indicated that roaches were having a chow down.

When the man asked Adam where his parents were the boy told him that they had been arrested the day before for operating a drug lab out of the basement of the house.

As I indicated above, this is only part of the story but it serves to illustrate the heart of the story. It is hard to imagine that the family in question would treat their home this way.

How do we treat the house that our heavenly Father has given us? What do we invite into our houses? What do we produce from within our houses? What comes from our hearts and minds and tongues to the people around us?

God not only made us, giving us our bodies; in Jesus Christ He came to redeem and save these very bodies after we had desecrated them with sin and selfishness and rebellion. And yet…and yet…are we good stewards of them?

“…do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body,” 1 Corinthians 6:19 – 20.