Friday, January 28, 2011

Home Sweet Home

We Celebrate!  Today marks the 15th Anniversary of being in our house, here in Walpole!!
For lunch, Christianna and Lydia made a special meal to celebrate.  Cranberry tip tops for the appetizer, fresh green salad, buttered finger potatoes, and herb crusted bake wild salmon...hmmm.  For a dessert(this was really special), chocolate mousse!!
We moved here to our home, on January 28, 1996 with seven young children.  Deborah was the baby, just five months old.  Within a couple of years we had two more daughters born to us in this very house. Over the years we have had many friends from near and far(Japan!! and the Ukraine!! just to name a few) to visit.  We've seen the children grow up, many have finished primary education at home. Courtships and weddings have taken place. Marriages have brought more people into our family. We  now have visits from grandchildren here in this house.
  Although our family is now quite different from the one that arrived here 15 years ago...each one of us makes the Pena Family.  Without each one...we would not be a family.  What a blessing to have a mom and dad with children under one roof in this house...but this house doesn't make it a home.  The people make the home.  The commitment, service, and love to each other, that is what makes us a family -that is what makes a house a home..
So this reminded me of 'the Church'.  As I grew up on Sundays we went to "church".  We had church on Sundays and Wednesdays.  But is that church??  
Over the years I learned that it is the believers that are the "Church" -- not the meeting place. So on the Lord's Day we go to the "meeting" to remember the Lord and the fellowship with the saints --who are the church.
  So when you look at it this way...it doesn't matter really where you meet...in a house, in a town office building, in a religious building...they are all buildings.  But we do meet with the Church -- the believers whom the Lord has ransomed and called out.  
As a house doesn't make us a family, the building doesn't make us a church.
 All though we celebrate our 15 years here in this house...it is the goodness of the Lord for his provisions here,  that we rejoice in!

  And when they were come, and had gathered the church together, they rehearsed all that God had done with them... Acts 14:27
  

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