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Our House on the Rock by Michael Harvey |
A few weeks after I had begun my new work as the Executive Director of the Conference of Baptist Ministers in Massachusetts, my family moved into our new home in Worcester. It was the first home we had owned. (I know, the bank really owns it, but you know what I mean.) I was 57 years old, so I would have a mortgage burning at age 87. For over 36 years, we had lived in parsonages. My family now consists of me; my spouse, Paula; our 8 year old daughter, Stephanie; my mother-in-law, Joyce; and Butterfly the Cat. My mother called from West Virginia one day to say she and Dad were proud of me. She was proud of me because of my new position, and Dad was proud of me because I finally became a home-owner.
When I accepted the position in Massachusetts, I knew we would have to buy a house. Paula and I made three trips to Massachusetts from Chicago searching for a house. The houses in our price range included a house with a toilet on the basement steps, one with back steps to nowhere, one complete with a large pigeon coop, one across the street from a junk yard, and one with the promise that the walls would be in before we were ready to move in.
I started my work living in a rooming house near a local college while my family remained in Chicago. My plan was to spend Sunday afternoons at open houses. The first Sunday, I found our dream house. We needed 4 bedrooms, at least 2 baths, and an office. I had been through five or six houses that Sunday. None of them came close to what we needed. My last house was in a town north of Worcester called Holden. The bedrooms were so small I was thinking we would have to sleep hanging from a nail. I was driving down Main Street toward the State Road 222A back to my room in Worcester. I was praying for God to lead me to the right house when I saw a Salisbury Street sign. That morning I had worshiped in the First Baptist Church of Worcester and it was on Salisbury Street. I didn’t know for sure that this was the same Salisbury, but I took a chance. About three miles down the street, out of the corner of my eye I caught a small open house sign pointing to a side street. By the time I had seen it I had passed the street. It was getting late and I was tired, but something told me to turn around and check it out. I turned around in the parking lot of Temple Sinai. There was a sculpture out front called “The Burning Bush.”
I stopped in front of the house on Spring Valley Road, and my first thought was “It is out of my price range.” But I went in anyway. It was the perfect house for us. I knew my family would love it. There was a family room with picture windows looking out on a very private back yard with a fish pond complete with waterfall and spewing egret. The kitchen was big with lots of cabinets. There was the right number of bedrooms, including a pink bedroom for Stephanie. And there was a “manly” office. After walking through the house I picked up a brochure, sure that it was out of my range. It was, by about $13,000.
I didn’t say anything to my family. On Tuesday I called my real estate agent and told her about the house. She took me to the house again. When she walked in she said, “This is the house for Paula.” It had not appeared on her list for me because it had just been reduced by $20,000, and she had not received the information. She called the bank and we figured out a way we could finance it. I called Paula and told her about it, and how I believed God had led me to the house, and that I knew she would love it even though she had not seen it. I made an offer. There had been two other offers like mine, but they chose mine. The owners seem to like the idea of a minister’s family living in their house. Paula first saw the house at the inspection. There were several other ways that God’s presence was evident to us as we worked through this.
Well, here we are two years later, very happy in our house to which God sent us. My Dad died last December, but he died at peace, knowing all three of his sons were homeowners. Every year on October 10, the day we moved in, we go out to celebrate, and our celebration always begins with a prayer of thanksgiving and a prayer of hope that our home will be filled with love and will always know the presence of God.
Michael Harvey is the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Conference of Baptist Ministers.