From, Casey at Home

There is a special kind of faithful work that never ends.

It smells like dish soap and clean laundry. It sounds like the dryer humming in the background while dinner cooks on the stove. It looks like wiping down counters that will be covered in crumbs again and vacuuming floors that will look like they haven’t been touched by tomorrow.

And yet, these small acts of homemaking are not so simple and needlessly endless that they don’t matter in purpose of eternal life.

Modern culture tends to believe that significance or purpose must be visible by all. Productive. Able to be ‘liked’ and ‘shared’ by others, even. But Scripture repeatedly shows us a God who delights in steady cultivation. Seeds buried in dirt… daily bread… manna gathered one morning at a time. Small repetitive works of obedience in the domestic realm.

In many ways, homemaking is a theology of ordinary dominion.

God placed Adam in the garden “to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Before there was sin, there was cultivation. Human beings were quite literally created to bring order, beauty, and stewardship into the corners of creation entrusted to them by the Creator, for His glory.

This means homemaking is not in any way lesser than work done in offices, pulpits, or public platforms. A Christian home is not a side project to real kingdom work. It is kingdom work. And it’s one of the most important places where kingdom work begins.

A sink full of dishes presents to you the same question every day: will you grumble, or will you serve? Laundry asks whether you will resent your duties or view them as evidence of people to love. None of these tasks save anyone. Christ has already accomplished that fully and finally. However, the faithful life begins bearing fruit of His lordship everywhere, including those dirty dishes in the sink and the crumbs on living room floor. The grocery budget, the meal planning, the changing of sheets, and of diapers, the sweeping of porches… all of it falls under His reign. And because of that, all of it can (should!) be offered back to Him in worship.

The Christian life is often built through repetitive obedience that feels unimpressive in the moment.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t note there is also something radically countercultural about consistently maintaining a home in service and love. We live in an age which glorifies escape. Escape from responsibility, inconvenience, repetition. Every day we joyfully serve others in our homes in the pursuit of a faithful life, this pushes back against the notion that chores are meaningless tasks to delay or find ways out of.

Christ, in all His glory, stepped into ordinary human life fully. He ate meals and walked dusty roads. He attended weddings. He spoke with children as they sat near. He visited homes. The Son of God was not above ordinary daily life, so we should be careful not to think we are.

Within the walls of ordinary homes, children learn what faithfulness looks like. Husbands and wives learn forgiveness. Guests experience hospitality. We disciple one another in a thousand teeny moments around dinner tables and couch cushions and games of backyard catch. A well-kept home will never usher in the kingdom of God on its own, but a faithful Christian household should be its best representation of it.

Stewardship always reveals what we believe about God. Do we see our homes as burdens to manage, or gifts to cultivate for people we love? Do we believe mundane obedience is beneath us?

Perhaps the dishes matter a little more than we think.