Soft Sheets and Lumpy Pillows

Photo by Lorene Farrugia on Unsplash

I have always loved the idea of having a guest room in my home, but it hasn’t been very many years that we’ve had the space to have one. So when I finally did have a guest room, it was exciting to prepare a room in which my beloved family and friends, visitors to our church, or people the Lord brought our way would be able to sojourn comfortably.

I set about painting it a warm but restful color and decorated it with an eye toward France—dried lavender, soft colors, and a side-by-side English and French Bible translation. Quiet clock? Check. A little dish of candies? Check. Linens for bathing? Check! The most important element, of course, was the bedding. I piled it on à la The Princess and the Pea so our guests would have a restful night’s sleep.

After I finished preparing the room, a friend joked that perhaps we should add some lumpy pillows. After all, we didn’t want people to become so comfortable that they never wanted to leave . . . right? Her comment reminded me of the years when our then-teenaged son would not get up on time in the morning, and we finally rolled some marbles under his sheets so that it would be more comfortable to get out of bed than to stay put.

We can become too comfortable in this world, too, which in actuality is not our home (Philippians 3:20). We are just passing through, strangers in the land, as Scripture puts it. Thérèse of Lisieux reminds us, “The world’s thy ship and not thy home.” God gives us many pleasant, comfortable things to help us see His goodness in the land of the living, but we mustn’t become so comfortable that we don’t want to depart someday for our true home.

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Taken from Dwell: 90 Days at Home with God by Sandra Byrd © 2023. Used by permission of Our Daily Bread Publishing®, Box 3566, Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved. Further distribution is prohibited without written permission from Our Daily Bread Publishing (https://ourdailybreadpublishing.org/) ® at permissionsdept@odb.org.