The Reach Of Your Heart - The One Year Women's Friendship Devotional

The Reach of Your Heart

There is treasure in the house of the godly. Proverbs 15:6

Edith Schaeffer, the beloved Christian writer, married her husband, Francis, in the summer between college and his beginning seminary. Since it was during the Great Depression, the couple had no money, and jobs were almost nonexistent. That first summer they were counselors at a camp in Michigan. Their combined salary for the whole summer was only thirty dollars plus room and board. With almost no money, how could they make a homey place out of the small room they lived in? At a hardware store they found an old nail keg, which they remade into a stool. Edith sewed a bedspread and curtains, and they placed copper candlesticks on their table so they could have tea or supper by candlelight. With very little they created more than a temporary makeshift place: They made a home, even though it was for just a few short months. And it was filled with treasures—not those the world offers but the treasures of growth in Christ as a couple, of contentment and gratefulness, and of the creation of a joyful place. Their hearts reached way beyond their financial circumstances.

This became the pattern of their lives. In each place the Schaeffers lived, from a crowded little chalet in Switzerland when they began L’Abri ministry to the apartment near the Minnesota hospital where Francis received chemotherapy during his last months of life, they made a center of meaningful living and joyful enrichment wherever they were and invited others—hundreds of them over the years—to share what they had. In these days of fast-forward living and mobility, it’s easy for the places we live to become stopovers where we microwave food and change clothes between activities. And if your living situation is “temporary,” it’s challenging to create a sense of home. But whether you are single or married, in a dorm room, duplex, apartment, or house, you can use your personality, uniqueness, and creativity to create a true home. —CHERI

Lord, in whatever place I’m living, give me a heart for my home, a desire to make it a place of beauty and refreshment, not only for me but for all who walk through the doors.

The size of one’s home should never dictate the outreach of one’s heart.

—LUCI SWINDOLL, SPEAKER AND AUTHOR