Anybody Home?

Once when my  Bible study girlfriends were discussing their spiritual gifts like mercy, administration, service and so on, my friend Mary Jo pronounced her spiritual gift to be "I'm home."

"I'm not an organizer, don't speak in tongues or lead Bible studies -- I'm home.  All of the young mothers have me on their 'first to call list' in case their children have an emergency at school.  People stop by and know my kitchen is open for business.  You don't have to set up a time to see me because I'm usually -- home"

Who's home any more?  Certainly not me.  I'm not even in town often.  

Although I'm grateful to have the flexibility to travel to where I'm needed I must admit I'm a little envious of you women who have the daily pleasure of being  in their home.

While I was in Louisville mother and I had time to dig through some of her old poetry books.  This poem is one of our favorites:

I have found such joy in simple things;

A plain, clean room, a nut-brown loaf of bread

A cup of milk, a kettle as it sings,

The shelter of a roof above my head,

And in a leaf-laced square along the floor,

Where yellow sunlight glimmers through a door.

I have found such joy in things that fill

My quiet days: a curtain’s blowing grace,

A potted plant upon my window sill,

A rose, fresh-cut and placed within a vase;

A table cleared, a lamp beside a chair,

And books I long have loved beside me there.

Oh, I have found such joys I wish I might

Tell every woman who goes seeking far

For some elusive, feverish delight,

That very close to home the great joys are:

The elemental things–old as the race,

Yet never, through the ages, commonplace.

Grace Noll Crowell