Open Door ~ Holy Experience

When they asked, I walked the tree. Traced the branches, the roots, wrote our names down, birthdates and birthplace, us all living out on a limb.

Come week's end, Opa Voskamp's boards the steel bird and flies home to the Netherlands and he'll carry the tree, the family tree, back to the old country with him, plant it in veins that run with his blood.

And it snagged me as I walked our branch of the familial tree. I had only one place name to write. Farmer Husband was born in the same hospital where I was born. We were married in the same town as that hospital. Our children were born in that same hospital, that same town.

Sometimes, home has old walls.

Last night, leaning up against the front door, I watched the sunset, Farmer Husband and I, children all tucked under worn quilts. Light burned as it brushed earth, flamed the sky. Our hands touched. Then he went to bed, next day still coming in the dark, and I walked out to edge of the field to feel the heat of day's end.

God always keeps the home fires burning.

Grass blades between toes, I warmed, sparrows strung across the hydro lines overhead. And as the last embers smoldered, I turned towards home, caught the windows panes kindling too. Do we burn?

Coming up across the lawn, I could see that I'd left the front door wide open. Like souls with open doors, welcoming pilgrims into the inner rooms. I step into the house, onto these old plank floors, into these interior places meant to be a dwelling place for God. He, a place for a heart to come home to, house with older than time walls, and Him seeking a place to lodge.

We live here with each other, the Lodger, and we who seek lodging within Him, and the maple tree grows old, branches sheltering generations.

:::

Welcome.

Darcy of Graphically Designing worked adeptly, wisely, to rewire the old walls of this blog so that there are no longer code issues, the sparking and shorting with Internet Explorer that had been plaguing this space for the last several months. And too, of course, she painted and moved the furniture around, what creative woman are apt to do when fixing up a place. ~warm smile~

Sometimes long-lived in houses need structural work to remain habitable. And then we move back in and wear the space into being loved and real.

I pray this newly renovated corner of the web may be a quiet place for your heart to to make a home with Him, a place that gently opens soul doors that He might come and take up a long-life residence. Poke around these old walls, roam through the crannies and links in side and lower sidebars, find a new page or two, and yes, make yourself at home.

The door's always wide open.

All's grace,

Photos: sunset and home last night, dwelling places ....