A Tiny House for God

A Post from Pastor Stephen Magee, Exeter Presbyterian Church, Exeter, NH

 From the moment I heard about the tiny house movement, I was interested. Tiny houses are not easy to build in most places in the United States because they violate local building codes. For instance, the maximum size for an official tiny house is 400 square feet, which in our town in New Hampshire, is the minimum legal size for a structure intended for a human dwelling place. That would make it virtually impossible to build a tiny house here without going through a special approval process.

I have always been interested in small things. The idea of what you could do to make a livable home in 100 square feet sends me off into a quiet place with a ruler, pencil, and postcard, thinking about how it could be done. This is not everyone's reaction to the movement. When I called the building inspector in a neighboring city to see what their rules might be, he was more than officially dismissive. “Have you ever been in a tiny house?” I had not. I had only admired them from afar. “They're very small.”

Despite the fact that I had never actually been on anything more than a virtual tour of a tiny house, I got it in my head that it might be a great project to make our state of New Hampshire a center for the fast-expanding tiny house industry. It would fit the survivalist streak in a certain percentage of our citizens. More than that, I hoped that it might provide jobs for some who would like to be engaged in meaningful and profitable work.

Everyone needs a house, and it is my unusual claim that everyone has actually lived in a tiny house. How could that be when I have already admitted that I have never even been in a tiny house? Like many apparent contradictions, it comes down to a question of definition. Let me be more specific regarding my universal assertion that everyone has lived in a tiny house. Each person's first house was a tiny house. It was just the right size for your needs. It was in that house that you received your first nutrition. You were warm and protected there, you started to learn the sound of family voices, and you even began to feel love. I am speaking of the wonderfully elegant design of a woman's uterus. Appropriate in every way—warm, safe, generous, and full of goodness—your mother's womb was your first abode, and it was decidedly, a very tiny house.

What is most amazing to me about this tiny house in a woman's body, is that the God of all the universe considered it to be an acceptable home for Himself. When He came into this world to take care of our greatest needs, His first home was in the womb of a virgin named Mary. In earlier centuries when people had wanted to build a house for God, they were immediately made aware that their plans were far too small for the divine being who made all things. As He Himself said in Isaiah 66:1-2,

            [1] Thus says the LORD:

            “Heaven is my throne,

                        and the earth is my footstool;

            what is the house that you would build for me,

                        and what is the place of my rest?

            [2] All these things my hand has made,

                        and so all these things came to be,

                                                            declares the LORD.

Who would dare to imagine that a man could build a palace or a temple for the Almighty? Yet God Himself gladly lived in a tiny house, just like each of us. Why did He do it? The Lord was determined that He would become a human being in order to be our Savior. He was made man in order to live in perfect obedience to His Father's commandments and then to die the death that we deserved so that we could live with Him forever. He had to be born, and therefore He had to live in a tiny house. What a great condescension!

There is another sense in which God is willing to live in a tiny house within you right now. He spoke of it in the final phrases of Isaiah 66:2.

            But this is the one to whom I will look (with favor):

                        he who is humble and contrite in spirit

                        and trembles at my word.

After His death on the cross for our sins, Jesus rose from the dead, and was seen by more than 500 people, including the original apostles who gave their lives for the truth of this new faith. He did not remain on earth forever. After forty days He ascended to His heavenly throne at the right hand of the Father. Yet He is content to live in the tiny house of every soul who will receive Him with humility and contrition.

How can you find out the truth about Jesus? “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” (Romans 10:17) You can take in the message of the Bible proclaimed to you and then study it together with others and continue to read it yourself. When you receive the Bible with awe as the true Word of God, you are doing what Isaiah 66:2 describes. You are trembling at His Word.

In the 19th century, Phillips Brooks wrote a famous hymn about the two ways that God comes to dwell with us. Perhaps you have sung it as a Christmas carol.

1. O little town of Bethlehem,

How still we see thee lie.

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by;

Yet in thy dark streets shineth

The everlasting Light.

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight.

2. For Christ is born of Mary,

And, gathered all above

While mortals sleep, the angels keep

Their watch of wond’ring love.

O morning stars, together

Proclaim the holy birth,

And praises sing to God the King,

And peace to men on earth.

3. How silently, how silently

The wondrous gift is giv’n!

So God imparts to human hearts

The blessings of his heav’n.

No ear may hear his coming;

But in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive him, still

The dear Christ enters in.                                                                                (Phillips Brooks, 1835–1893)