Building Your Own Home Sweet Home

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Laura Ingalls Wilder said, “Home is the nicest word there is.” Pa, Ma, Mary, Laura, Carrie, and Grace Ingalls moved often and lived in several states. Whether they were in a log cabin in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, . . .

. . . a little board house in Kansas, . . .

. . . a dugout on the banks of Plum Creek in Minnesota, . . .

. . . or a claim shanty in South Dakota, . . .

. . . Charles and Caroline Ingalls always gave their girls a safe place called home.

When the red-checked tablecloth was on the table, the china shepherdess was on the shelf, and Pa was playing his fiddle in the twilight, the Ingalls family was at home. The girls lived securely in the knowledge that their strong Pa would feed and defend them while their gentle Ma would care for them and train them. They knew that Pa and Ma would always love each other and love their girls.

Almost 200 years ago, actor and poet John Howard Payne wrote the song, “Home Sweet Home.” Soon people across America were singing, “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.” The song gave comfort to both Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.

Irving Berlin (who had been born Israel Beilin) and his family immigrated from Belarus to New York City when Berlin was five years old. His father died shortly after Berlin’s thirteenth birthday. Berlin began working odd jobs. He sang for pennies and also became a singing waiter. He also became a songwriter. At age 23, Berlin published his first international hit, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” About 100 years after Payne gave us “Home Sweet Home,” immigrant Irving Berlin gave us “God Bless America.”

Each day that you follow Jesus, you are building you own home sweet home.

Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine
and acts on them, 
may be compared to a wise man
who built his house on the rock.  
And the rain fell,
and the floods came,
and the winds blew
and slammed against that house;
and yet it did not fall,
for it had been founded on the rock.
Matthew 7:25

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