Temporary Things
Decorating our homes is far more involved than just hanging art on the walls, finding the perfect throw pillow, or bringing the outside in. This was one of the things I enjoyed about Welcome Home by Myquillyn Smith. She encourages and trains you to think of ‘decorating’ as more than tchotchkes. Decorating goes deeper than the dust catchers. Decorating is in all the layers. In everything. Decorating is creating beauty for your family.
It is in the blankets on the bed, the food on the table, the music in the air, the scents that gather everyone in. Decorating isn’t just on the walls, it is an element of every part of homemaking. It is beautifying this little bit of temporary housing the Lord has provided.
So, how do we believers think about decorating properly? These homes and these things in our homes are temporary things. Things that will be burned. Things, as my Dad calls them, in their pre-ash state. What does any of it matter? Who cares about decorating if it’s all going to go up in flames?
The simple Sunday school answer? God does.
One of my favorite movies is Mad Max Fury Road. Oh, how I love this movie. I love it for so many layered reasons, from filming, to acting, to the fight scenes, to just so many different things. (And this is a whole other conversation.) The point is, that in the Mad Max world, the apocalypse has happened and the world is reduced to this gross, deformed, harsh environment where everything is an unending battle. The world is a harsh place where the weak are abused, tortured, and used by the strong. And even the strong are traumatized. There is no green, no rain, no hope.
Hold that image in your mind. A world of death, abuse, and suffering where even color has been leached from the rocks.
Now, look out your window. The sun is slanting through the trees, highlighting the changing of the leaves from green to gold. Birds are singing. Traffic creates a soft hum in the background, joining with the cycling fridge as people start the week. Coffee and the heater warm the day. Grass, blue sky, leaves, shelter, food, and comfort.
This is our world post-apocalypse.
This world is beautiful.
We think of the Garden of Eden as beautiful, but do we realize God, post-Flood, didn’t damn us to living in the dystopian world of our stories. God is gracious. We are not. Post-Flood, God didn’t throw up his hands and say, “What does it matter? In a few thousand years, I’m going to burn it all. There’s no point in beauty post- and pre-apocalypse.”
No, God didn’t. He filled the earth after the flood with plants and animals. This world is God’s version of Post-Apocalypse.
Yes, you might say, but beauty for a few thousand years is one thing, what does beauty matter if it’s only for a few decades?
Stop.
God didn’t just create oceans, mountains, and oak trees. He created rainbows, flowers, tiny insects. Some flowers only bloom at night and some only boom in the morning and none of them last for long. Some insects live for years in the ground then come up to breed and die in hours. Many of these things aren’t even noticed by us. Many of them happen far away from us.
What does this tell us?
That beauty and creativity are important. They’re important to God and should be to us. God thinks temporary beauty is important. Just look at the post-apocalyptic world we live in! It is so much more gracious than we ever dream the post-apocalypse to be.
Read the temple descriptions in the Old Testament and tell me God doesn’t care about beauty. Even temporary beauty. God never told Solomon to not build his temple because it would just be destroyed.
Temporariness isn’t an excuse for not caring about beauty.
As justified believers, we get an extra layer. All this that I’ve said is rooted in natural theology. It is looking at the world and seeing what it communicates about God. But we have revealed theology, special revelation. We have saving grace on top of common grace. This means that we can bring beauty into our homes in grace, for His glory. We can enjoy the bountiful gifts God has given us. We can make doing dishes beautiful because we aren’t doing them as a dead work. We’re doing them by grace and for God’s glory. God makes even simple, ordinary, everyday things beautiful. So yeah, beauty is important even when it is temporary.
This is why the domestic arts aren’t a waste of time. This is why a meal should look beautiful and taste beautiful. This is why we take time with our homes. This is why we don’t just give our buildings and families the bare minimum. God thinks beauty is important, and a gift richly to be enjoyed. So should we.
We homemakers, HearthKeepers, tenders of the temporary, should seek to create beauty in our homes interdimensionally.
From the floors to the seats, to the displays, closets, clothes, to the organization, to the plants, dishes, tools, and everything else, we should seek beauty, use beauty, create beauty. Not because it is forever beauty, but because God thinks temporary beauty is important and He has given us things to richly enjoy. We may live our lives here below the sun, but we have an above the sun attitude. We know it is temporary, but because we do it to glorify God, it takes on an element of the eternal.
Now go back to the article Layers, Part 2. You are a finite creature, not God. God can create layers of beauty from atoms to galaxies and everything in between from the dawn of time to the death of time. He creates beauty that lasts only seconds and others that last centuries. You aren’t God. You are only one woman in a fallen world. Don’t try to be God. That’s a burden you can’t bear. But be a child and reflect your heavenly Father.
Remember your liberty. The beauty in your home isn't defined by someone else’s beauty in their home. I love glass, warm throws, books, and candles. Someone else may love bright colors, crisp sheets, and every surface crowded with sparkling things. One of us may be a Cozi Minimalist, the other a Farmgirl, a Modern, or one may not have a label. Some of us decorate with nostalgia, some with pictures of the ones we love, and some like a bare wall. One woman may paint her own pictures for all her rooms and fill her pantry with her own canned goods. Another may just bring Hobby Lobby home and let Wal-mart do her canning. It doesn’t matter what you do but why you do it. The ‘what’ will naturally flow out from the ‘why’.
The point is to hedge your freedom. Freedom doesn’t mean not doing anything. Freedom means getting to embrace our unique expressions of beauty in our unique homes. That’s freedom. The boundaries are what gives us freedom and diversity. Oh diversity, you beautiful thing.
One of the things I find most sad about communism and socialism and the intolerant tolerance view we have in America, is that they squash diversity. They think equality isn’t equality of opportunity, but equality of stuff. This flattens the world into monochromatic boredom.
Diversity isn’t boring.
Again, we have to strike a balance.
We decorate without identifying ourselves based on our ability to decorate. We are diverse without using that diversity as an excuse to avoid responsibility.
You may not drink coffee in the morning all snuggled up in a warm bathrobe and blanket while reading theology and philosophy. No? Just me? You may not be torn between a Cozi Minimalist and Cottage Witch aesthetic. No? Just me?
But you should be thinking, noticing, creating warmth and beauty in your home. You should be finding time and ways to grow your mind. It won’t look like me. My husband is a student of theology and philosophy, so I try to keep up. Coffee is practically a family sacrament. For the extended Vincent Clan…Mafia…whatever, it ties us to each other and our past. “It’s a hug in a mug,” my Mom says. We all love our coffee because it says we love each other. I drink mine knowing my parents and siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles are also drinking theirs, as our grandparents did before us. It ties us together.
Must you drink coffee?
Nope.
But it is good and wise and delightful—oh, enjoying God’s ordinary, temporary gifts—to know what speaks comfort to your family. What brings out laughter and warm fuzzies into your home? What makes your heart sing? Can you make your husband smile and feel loved? Can you, do you, enjoy being home? What says home to you?
Diversity is beautiful and beauty is a rich gift from the Lord. He hasn’t called us to a life of stoic coldness. He has created, even post-apocalypse, a world of beauty from the smallest things to the greatest. We should observe our homes and work to create beauty even in the temporary.
