The Making of a Beautiful and Happy Home
Inside: I love bringing beauty into our home with fresh flowers, cozy blankets, favorite mugs, candlelight, and soft music. But what is it that truly makes a home beautiful and happy?
I love bringing beauty into our home. Fresh flowers on the table, cozy blankets within reach, a favorite mug filled with coffee, candles lit, and soft music playing in the background—these are simple things, but they help make our home feel warm and welcoming.
Our home is a gift from the Lord and I do want my family and anyone who visits us to feel welcome and cared for when they’re here. Those little touches are one way I try to do that, but I know that the candles and the coffee mug aren’t what make a home happy.
What makes a home beautiful is the life we share inside it. I think of the times one of our kids came home discouraged after a hard day at school, and we could love on them, listen to them, and pray for them before bed. Moments like that don’t look like much, but they’re where a home becomes a place of love, as we keep reminding each other of the Lord’s goodness and faithfulness.
A happy home isn’t one without sorrow or difficulties, and it doesn’t mean everyone in it will always be happy or that we never sin against one another. Every family will have hard seasons, and ours certainly has.
But by God’s grace, our homes can be a place where our families know they’re loved. They can come home tired from the cares of the day and find rest, and then go back out encouraged for whatever the Lord has before them.
J. R. Miller describes this kind of home so beautifully:
“A true home is one of the most sacred of places. It is a sanctuary into which men flee from the world’s perils and alarms. It is a resting-place to which, at close of day, the weary retire to gather new strength for the battle and toils of tomorrow. It is the place where love learns its lessons, where life is schooled into discipline and strength, where character is molded.
[…]
“Few things we can do in this world are so well worth doing as the making of a beautiful and happy home! He who does this builds a sanctuary for God and opens a fountain of blessing for men.
“Far more than we know do the strength and beauty of our lives depend upon the home in which we dwell. He who goes forth in the morning from a happy, loving, prayerful home into the world’s strife, temptation, struggle, and duty is strong—inspired for noble and victorious living.
“The children who are brought up in a true home go out trained and equipped for life’s battles and tasks, carrying in their hearts a secret of strength which will make them brave and loyal to God and will keep them pure in the world’s severest temptations!”
—J. R. Miller, Secrets of Happy Home Life: What Have You to Do with It? (1894)
I love Miller’s picture of home as a place where weary people come to gather strength for another day.
It makes me realize how easily we can underestimate the influence of the life shared within our homes. On an ordinary day, we may not see it, but those simple moments, like praying with a child after a hard day, are shaping our family more than we know.
And the making of a beautiful and happy home doesn’t depend upon us doing everything perfectly. Our hope isn’t in our ability to create just the right atmosphere or protect our families from every difficulty. Our hope is in Christ.
We depend upon Him to give us patience when we’re tired, humility when we need to ask forgiveness, wisdom when someone we love needs counsel, and strength to continue serving faithfully.
So yes, let’s bring fresh flowers into our homes, light the candles, play the music, prepare favorite meals, and enjoy the beauty the Lord allows us to create. These are sweet gifts, and they can be meaningful ways of loving the people who enter our homes.
But let’s also remember the beauty that matters most—a home where Christ is honored, where the truth of His Word shapes our lives, and where the people within its walls are loved and cared for.
Few things really are so well worth doing.
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My new book, Homemaking Matters: Living for God’s Glory in the Ordinary
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