Shoutout

Two Sundays ago, the message at BHOF was directed specifically toward young people:

“Remember your creator in the days of your youth” (Ecclesiastes 12:1).

The preacher in Ecclesiastes doesn’t call God “creator” anywhere else in the book.

One reason, I argued, that the preacher uses the term creator here is to send us back to Genesis 1:26-31 with this reminder: when we cultivate capacities we have uniquely as image-bearers of God, we reflect the God who said “Let us make man in our own image,” and he gets glory.

It’s this point I want to pick up on in this little post. What does Genesis 1 itself emphasize about God? Because what is emphasized about God in Genesis 1 is likely to be part of what’s being emphasized about us when it says we’re like him, made in his image—made to reflect him.

The Maker and His Reflection

So what things stand out most about God in this passage, showing us ways in which we are (to be) like him?

Here’s one: He’s a maker. He makes useful and beautiful things. He organizes his world in a way that makes life flourish. He plants and tends to a beautiful place in Eden. He makes humanity’s home. He is, if you will, a homemaker.

Well, maybe you already see my point. Young people, old people, in-between-people, I want to turn your attention to those who every day reflect God among us in an often underappreciated or unnoticed way: our homemakers.

These are the women who may not have the leisure to cultivate interests and capacities and delights that many of the rest of us do, because they are committed to working not at home, necessarily, but on the home.

Our broader culture doesn’t value this kind of work. A woman’s significance and identity is often presented as what she enjoys or accomplishes for herself and outside the home. But if Ecclesiastes and Genesis and Proverbs 31 (and the rest of the Bible) are right, homemaking is a noble and glorious calling.

Making It Home

So I want to send this shoutout to those among us who get God glory by embracing the difficult calling of homemaking: those who make useful and beautiful things like meals and grocery lists and kids’ routines. Who organize their family’s small world in a way that makes life flourish. Who tend to the weeds of laundry and dirty dishes, fending off chaos and maintaining order. Who make houses or apartments into warm, welcoming homes.

Don’t think I have a particular kind of home in mind. Maybe your house is messy. Maybe it’s bare. Maybe you need to fight against idolizing it or against being ashamed of it.

Maybe the edges of your routine are frayed or maybe it’s spiraling out of control.

Certainly you need Jesus’ help, and its obvious to everyone who knows you well. Welcome to the club.

But what I’m trying to say is more basic, more true-no-matter-what: if you, in a desire to honor God and bless your family, are serving as a homemaker, you are cultivating the capacity to reflect God as a maker. You may have had to give up on a dozen other aspirations and abilities in order to do it. And what I’m saying is, it’s not a waste. You reflect God among us in a way no one else does. You image the homemaking God of Genesis 1 in a unique and valuable way.

Thank you.

Glory be to God.