THIS OLD HOUSE

I once watched an eerie movie called, "A Ghost Story" (2017) that in a way tells the story of the life cycle of a house.  There's more to the movie, of course, but that's what I remember.  A young husband is tragically killed leaving his wife behind.  But now as a ghost he cannot interact with his family.  So he remains in the house unnoticed.  Eventually, she remarries and they move from the house.  But this ghost doesn't move.  For decades he just roams the house as families come and go.  Eventually, the house is demolished and a high rise towers over where this house once stood.  Only he knows the whole history of the house.

As I bicycle through the country, that's what I see.  Hundreds of ghost stories.  Houses that have lived through generations of families and housed hope, fear, abuse, great joy, faith, and secrecy.   The pictures in this post are from my travels over the last two weeks.  

The most dilapidated of them no doubt harken back to the first Homestead Act 1862 signed into law by none other than Abraham Lincoln.  Homesteaders were given 162 acres, so go for it.  And these pioneers did go for it.  By the millions.  In a dry and dreary land.  Crop failures were inevitable.   Folks were set up for failure.  So eventually nearly all of these pioneers left this dry land for greener grass.  Yet as I pass by these broken houses, I wonder who lived in them?  Most of the houses stand in the middle of nowhere.  What happened in those houses over the years?  And why were these homestead houses eventually abandoned?   

I imagine that these houses once reverberated with the laughter of children playing on the bare floor with homespun toys and straw dolls.  I hope that many of these houses echoed a family praying in the evening or engaging one another around the dinner table after a long day's work in the field.  Maybe some of these decrepit, wooden houses outlived their dwellers.  A young couple who have lived their whole life in the house, raising a family, and in the end they still sit around a homely table, now aged, but still together next to empty chairs.

But eventually everything changes.  And the houses are abandoned.  Who was the last to shut the door that final time?  Maybe families finally eked out enough from the harsh land to move to the city and better opportunities.  Thousands did that.  More often though, failure closed the door for the last time.  And these pioneers walked away into the night.  

A closing thought.  In 1954, Stuart Hamblin saw something closer to home than just some old abandoned houses.  Wrote a song about it.  "This Old House.'  Here's one of the verses:

This ole house once knew his children

This ole house once new his wife

This ole house was home and comfort

As they fought the storms of life

This ole house once rang with laughter

This ole house heard many shouts

Now he trembles in the darkness

When the lightning walks about.

St. Paul, thinking of houses said, "We do not lose heart, for though our outward "house" (self) is wasting away, yet our inward self is renewed day by day" (2 Corinthians 4:18). Over time the house with our name on it, the one that walks around, goes to work, loves his spouse, and blesses his kids, will become more and more like those houses standing alone in the Great Plains.  One day the door will shut for the final time.  Yet, here's the hope.   On that day we will be present in our new house.  Jesus promised his Church a new dwelling place where tears will be banished and love multiplied.   "In my Father's house are many mansions . . . "

So next time you pass one of these old crumbly houses, remember the promise--"we ain't gonna need this house no longer" because we will be with the Lord.