This Old House

This Old House

The first house I can remember living in was a low-slung, pinkish-brick ranch with a long, long driveway in Refugio, Texas. I had not seen it for decades until a visit to a nearby coastal town made me curious. Was it still standing? Could I find it? Thanks to the magic of GPS (and a little help from reliable, ever-chirpy Siri), I located it with very little trouble and recognized it with even less.

Maybe I sat a bit too long in the car in front of the house, but I couldn’t stop staring . . . and remembering. A woman came out into the yard and began to putter around, checking me out but pretending not to. I opened the car door and walked over to explain, but I got out only a few words before I began to weep. “My parents built this house in 1963 . . .”

The woman put her arm around me as if I were a cousin or an old friend she hadn’t seen in years, then invited me inside. She led me up to the porch where I’d practiced dancing in my tap shoes (because my mother insisted indoor tapping would scar the linoleum), where I’d cried when our first dog died, begging to go visit him in heaven.

The house Mother had kept bright and squeaky clean was dark and full of clutter, and the owner was apologetic, but I was seeing what she couldn’t: a little girl on the kitchen floor, playing with pots and pans; two footie-pajama-ed sisters watching Captain Kangaroo in the living room; the bedroom where we said our God-blesses each night before falling into innocent sleep.

At some point in the tour a paper towel was pressed into my hands—I hadn’t realized how hard I was crying. I didn’t want to go back there, to that time and place, so much as I wanted all that I’d experienced there to be made new. Memory is eschatological, it has been said. And it is. It makes us long not only for all that was but for all that will be—and for the one who says, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5, NASB).

Compared to what’s coming, living conditions around here seem like a stopover in an unfurnished shack. . . . The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what’s ahead.

2 Corinthians 5:2, 5, MSG