Home Turf Advantage

Before I get started with what God has placed on my heart this week, I want to give you all an update. I’ve been sleeping much better overall during the past week, and I must believe it’s because your prayers are going up like sweet incense before our gracious Lord. So thank you. Please feel free to leave prayer requests as comments, and I will consider it my privilege to pray for you, whether you’ve prayed for me or not.
So let’s move on to new ground, though actually it’s old because this issue has been around since the fall of man. The issue is this: Why is it, I wonder, are we so often much more gracious and accepting of those we know least, and we are more unforgiving and critical toward those we know best?
Now, I’m talking about myself here, but I’m probably also talking about you. Sometimes I find myself looking for something to criticize about my family – my own family – while I make excuses for people who should be less dear to me. Is the spit on the bathroom mirror really all that important? Do I have to snap back when something is said that offends me? Do I respond in that way to people outside my household? 
How many times do I find myself being irritable toward a family member and then chatting away happily on the phone with a friend? How many times do I try to push away an interruption from a family member but drop everything for a need that arises outside the walls of our home?
Now, don’t go getting all sanctimonious with me. You know you do the very same thing. 
You and I are like the Nazarenes, the folks from Jesus’ hometown. They responded to Jesus’ teaching by making snippity comments along the lines of “Well, la-dee-da! We watched Him grow up. He’s nothing special. Who does He think He is, anyway?” The ones who should have been His greatest cheerleaders were His worst critics. The ones who knew Him best loved Him least.
Isn’t that how we are? Familiarity breeds contempt in our hearts. We expect those who know us best to keep loving us no matter how fierce our fangs or how sharp our talons. What we fail to remember is that human hearts are fickle, and the coldness of contempt begins to displace the warmth we once felt toward those we say we love.
Here’s a humbling thought for you: He who knows you best loves you most. The God who knit you together in your mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13), who searches your heart (Romans 8:27), who has ordained all your days (Psalm 139:16), who even knows the number of hairs on your head (Luke 12:7) still loves you with an everlasting love even on your worst days.
That’s the kind of love – the kind of grace – we need to extend toward each other. And so I suggest a new rule of home order: the home turf advantage. Greet your loved ones with smiles, hugs and compliments. Overlook the picayune stuff. Get over yourself and get under the banner of love. Give your best to those who know you best starting today. And extend that same principle to God, because if anyone deserves your best, it is He.
There’s more to the story of the nasty Nazarenes in Matthew 13. Depending upon which translation of the Scriptures you use, you’ll read that Jesus either couldn’t or didn’t perform many miracles among the Nazarenes because of their unbelief. So the nasty Nazarenes got their comeuppance. 
But we get ours, too, whenever we miss out on blessings flowing out of our family relationships (including our marriages) because we fail to be a blessing. And we get our comeuppance when we treat God with contempt, which can be a matter of simply taking Him for granted in the same way we take our families for granted.
I shudder to think what blessings – what miracles – I’ve missed out on in my own life because of my own hard-heartedness. But I do want to allow my home to be a haven for all who dwell within it, and I want my heart to be a haven for the One who has made His home there.