Gratitude for ‘This Old House’

“Are you glad to be going back?” The question came from a repatriated German friend married to an American veteran and naturalized German.

“Of course!” came my unstinting reply. I had enjoyed my husband’s five-year work tour but on this our final Sunday at church in Germany, I could not hide my gratitude to God to be going home.

But neither could my friend hide her bitterness towards America. She blamed bad experiences from working there in her youth, the current political circumstances, her own debilitating ill-health . . . her list ran on. She was unhappy although she was back in her own homeland, where she still enjoys U.S. military-base shopping privileges and even has a faithful American veteran as husband. 

“Yes!” I was glad to be going home.

Questioning Gratitude

The ten-plus hours flight back was one thing, and the month-long wait for the arrival of our household goods another. However, after more than two weeks waiting on the property manager to schedule the house walk-through and return our house keys, patience wore thin. We drove by more than once, looking longingly, as we collected our freshly rerouted mail. On one such occasion we took a peek in as a cleaner was present and working away. We were dismayed at what we saw and braced ourselves for the saga of woes that would unfold as we made our trouble-filled way back into our home.

Reconnecting with people in various parts of our neighborhood and community, the question often came, even if in altered forms, always “Are you glad to be back?” 

We guessed that, like my angry German friend, they were looking for our reaction to the political and volatile climate of our homeland, and that in light of a crucial election campaign underway. 

“You’re coming back to a country different from the way you left it five years ago, . . ,” one of our children warned. I began to question, Was I glad to be home, in the “land of the free and the home of the brave”? Was I glad to be back in this old house—my thirty-five-year old, faux-Victorian house established in an American Republic that is built on its 250-years old constitutional foundation?

Re-entry to our house framed a parallel: My sister had queried, early in our tour abroad, whether five years of living in a marble, granite, and glass piece of modern German architecture (our home in that country) would leave me discontented with my own house back home? 

Well, I was there; though still partially moved in, we engaged reclaiming and repairing our house. We walked through our now-grown children’s empty bedrooms reminiscing; we hacked and lopped away, re-taming the neglected, overgrown front garden. I stared for long moments out over the adjacent woods (newly purchased for “development” and marked with no trespassing signs); I savored, like a last long draught, the mix of tall pines and deciduous trees putting on their multicolored fall garb. I also pondered the altered demographic of our neighborhood and cul-de-sac, turning the question over in my mind: How grateful was I to be home? The approaching Thanksgiving and Advent seasons demanded an answer. 

Tear Down This House . . .

Around the year A.D. 33 Jesus’ mission was complete; He had been crucified, died, and was buried. A mere three days thereafter, His disciples noised abroad His glorious, epoch-shifting resurrection, and the birth of the rising Kingdom of God on earth. The tenuous old order of Israel, under the so-called Pax Romana, was forever disrupted with the whole world following sooth, soon thereafter. 

As the New Testament Church emerged and burgeoned in the city, the ruling religious elite was livid. Anything threatening their grasp on Jerusalem and its glorious Second Temple was to be stopped at all cost. If Jesus’ two rampaging efforts, pre-crucifixion, to clear the temple courts of their merchandising, commerce, and corruption had upset them, His death, resurrection, and the resulting birth of the Church at Pentecost, would deal them a blow from which they would never recover. The religious rulers’ rejection of Jesus and their refusal to heed His warnings to restore the temple courts to its intended use— for Gentile peoples to pray and seek God—sealed their doom. 

Some thirty-seven years later, as recorded by Jewish historian Josephus, the destruction Jesus prophesied fell on the city, on the Temple and on them. Under the Roman general Titus, Jerusalem, including the temple court Jesus had called My Father’s house, was besieged and eventually razed. The resulting dispersion and loss of life has had people of Jewish descent for centuries yearning and seeking to “make Aliyah”— to go home again, echoing wistfully at each parting, the words “next year, in Jerusalem.”

Trying to come to terms with the level of my upset about the transformed nature of home on so many levels, had me not only beginning to ask myself the question, “Was I glad to be back in my home?” but “What was the basis of my unhesitant response?” 

I had responded to those who had prodded further with, “Be it ever so humble there is no place like home.” But I was no Dorothy clicking my heels and returning from Oz. America is still arguably among the world’s top superpowers, and though hated for it, her embassies are still beseeched for entry visas more than any other place on earth. I love Thanksgiving season because it reminds me of why I love the founding prompts and motivations of America, and that not being merely her promise of economic betterment. It reminds me of why I could say I was glad to be going home to her, without even thinking about it. It is her miracle-riddled history, affirming her sound ideals, values and principles which are like none other, being based primarily on the unshakeable Holy Scriptures.

Razed in Order to Raise. . .

The poet Anne Bradstreet is one of early America’s heroes. Her scripturally-based writings convey the values and principles behind this nation’s founding and bleed indelibly on my heart. This wife of 17th century Massachusetts Bay Colony governor Simon Bradstreet stood and watched as her house burned to the ground one night in July1666. Her poem, “Verses Upon the Burning of Our House,” finds this colonial wife and mother reflecting on occasions when she would pass the burned and ruined remnants. She laments the changes and the undesired conditions on various levels, recalling special occasions of hospitality, cherished events, and remembering moments spent therein with her beloved spouse; now all “laid in dust,” as she dolefully put it. I knew those sentiments too, invoked by the queries and personal circumstances which now tested my earlier expressions of gratitude for being back home.

But the remainder of the poem finds Bradstreet upbraiding her soul, much like the psalmist David of Scriptures often did. She wrote, invoking a vision of the true home and storehouse of the believer’s eternal treasure, and the beloved Keeper of it all! 

And did thy wealth on earth abide,

Didst fix thy hope on mouldring dust,

The arm of flesh didst make thy trust?

Raise up thy thoughts above the sky

That dunghill mists away may fly.

Thou hast a house on high erect

Fram’d by that mighty Architect,

With glory richly furnished

Stands permanent, though this be fled.

It’s purchased and paid for too

By him who hath enough to do.

A price so vast as is unknown,

Yet by his gift is made thine own.

There’s wealth enough; I need no more.

Farewell, my pelf; farewell, my store.

The world no longer let me love;

My hope and Treasure lies above.[1]

Sobered by recall of this godly woman’s example, I purpose to “make Aliyah” this year—“going home” with thanksgiving in my heart for the grace that has seen me through tough times this year, and lifting grateful hands. It is indeed right to consider with deep gratitude the many blessings we have known. There is opportunity to restore, to heal and to renew no matter what flames or storms may have done their worst in recent times. And hereafter, Oh, hereafter! We get to dwell with the Lover of our souls, forever!

Legend says that as the Temple in Jerusalem burned in 70 AD the gold that had adorned her within, and that was stored in her walls, melted and ran down between her stones.[2] That must have been a mesmerizing sight in the midst of the murderous horror and mayhem. The soldiers were said to have been maddened with greed prying the stones apart to get at the gold, fulfilling Jesus’ prophecy that not one stone of the Temple would be left on another.[3] 

Paradox though it be, this inspires the thought that even if my earthly home, house or nation burns, like Anne Bradstreet’s piece, may something of lasting beauty pour forth and run down into the streets of earth to glorify the one Architect who will raise mansions for His Beloved, built on the sure foundation of faith in Christ alone. May songs of gratitude to that One who is worthy ever be on our lips and every place we dwell be the Father’s House to which all peoples hasten—grateful to be Home!

[1] Anne Bradstreet’s poems, including the one referenced, are all now in the public domain.

[2] Though Jewish historian Josephus wrote about the sack of the Temple in 70 AD there is no specific reference in his Book 6 of the Jewish Wars to confirm this detail of “melted gold oozing from between the temple stones,” though its likelihood is quite believable, moving medieval writers, modern archaeologists, and preachers to quote it as fact in their writings.  

[3] Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 all record Jesus’ prophecy, of not one stone of the Temple remaining on another, after Jerusalem’s destruction.

The featured image is courtesy of Julie Jablonski and used with her kind permission for Cultivating.

Denise Stair-Armstrong

Denise Armstrong (née Stair), blogs from a Christian cross-cultural perspective at denisesarmstrong.com. Born Jamaican, she received her Diploma in Education and a BA degree from Shortwood Teacher’s College and the University of the West Indies, Mona, in Jamaica. 

She delights to serve in areas of Christian discipleship, alongside her husband Claude. Their marriage of over thirty years which has joyfully produced three ‘Jamerican’ offspring, has also generated much fodder for marriage ministry to young couples. They thoroughly enjoyed serving in this capacity in their recent five-year tour of duty in Germany where they ministered among the US military community there. She also earned an MA in Christian Cultural Apologetics while there.

Denise’s work in playwriting, poetry, and creative-non-fiction essays, has appeared on Jamaican television, in international poetry reading events, and in The Joyful Life and Cultivating, as well as in The Caribbean Writer, a Literary Journal of the Virgin Islands.

denisesarmstrong.com