What makes a home?

So, what does make a home? Is the title of a "home" dependent on location or style? I hope not. This is our new home. It is made from the standard buildings, concrete and bricks. The roof is tile. The porch floor is covered with a smooth maroon tile while the rest of the house is covered with white. The cool tile feels good on one's feet. A less obvious benefit of white tile is that you can see the many creatures who share the home with us. The regulars are geckoes, large winged ant-like termites and small concrete eating ants. Frequent visitors include wasps, beetles and a lizard that is somewhat larger than a gecko. The obvious downside to white tile is that it shows dirt, which we have in abundance. Dirty footprints cover the floor after the kids come in. In the U.S. we often sought to get things clean and hopefully keep them that way. Here we are learning to live with the understanding that the word clean can include a few ants and footprints on the floor. Perhaps this is God's way of helping us realize that we don't so much arrive as Christians, but instead must daily sweep and mop the floors of our souls.

The top picture is of the front of our Indonesian home. Below it is the view from the road traveling west. Third from the top is what we see when we look south from our porch and the last picture is the road east from our home. The road east is what we take to get to school. As you can see, the term road can be applied to all varieties of paths, but that is a story for another time. Blessings, Jeff