“Sunny grey Watford.” Anyone who has lived in England will recognise the joke. It is the kind of thing Caribbean people in the UK have said for generations about the weather, the food, the damp in the back bedroom, the neighbours who do not say good morning. Complaining about England is practically a diaspora tradition, usually followed by a long, fond description of home.
There is nothing wrong with a bit of humour about the weather. But over years, the way we talk about where we live can shape how we live there. A family that speaks about its house, its street and its town only with complaint may find itself never quite settling. The place becomes somewhere to endure rather than somewhere to belong.
Setting the tone
David opens Psalm 34 with a decision: “I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Psalm 34:1, NKJV). The heading of the psalm links it to a time when David was on the run, pretending to be mad in a foreign court to save his life. He was about as far from home and comfort as a person could be. Yet he chose what would be in his mouth.
Proverbs puts the principle more starkly: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21, NKJV). Words do not magically change circumstances. But they shape the atmosphere of a household, the attitudes of children, and our own sense of whether we are living or merely waiting.
The “back home” trap
Consider a couple who came to England in their twenties, planning to stay five years. Forty years later they are still there. They have a paid-off terraced house, grown children, grandchildren at the local primary school. But in their minds they are still temporary. They never painted the front room the colour they liked, because they were “going home soon”. They never joined the residents’ association. Their conversation at the dinner table was, for decades, about what was wrong with England and what they would do when they got back.
When they finally visit Jamaica for a long stay, they find that home has changed too. Friends have died, prices have risen, the district is not quite as they remembered. Now they feel in-between: not fully at home in either place.
Their story is common, and there is no shame in it. Longing for home is deeply human. But it raises a question worth asking early: what might it look like to bless the place where God has actually put us, even while we love the place we came from?
Seek the peace of the city
When the people of Judah were taken into exile in Babylon, a place they certainly did not choose, Jeremiah sent them a surprising letter. Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their fruit. Marry, have children. “And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace” (Jeremiah 29:7, NKJV).
God did not tell them to forget Jerusalem. The same people wrote some of the most heartfelt songs of longing for home in all of Scripture. But He told them to live fully where they were, and to pray for that place.
Words that bless a place
What might it look like, practically, to speak blessing over where you live?
- Start the day with thanks. Before the complaint about the weather, name one thing about this house or this street you are grateful for.
- Pray for your street by name. The neighbour with the new baby. The elderly man who lives alone. The family whose car was broken into.
- Watch what the children hear. If they grow up hearing only that this place is second-best, they may struggle to belong anywhere.
- Invest a little. Paint the room. Plant the garden. Join something local. Actions follow words, and words follow actions.
- Keep loving home too. Blessing where you live does not require forgetting where you came from. Many families carry both, and are richer for it.
Grey skies, good words
The skies over Watford, or Brampton, or the Bronx, will not change because of what we say. But the house under those skies can become a place of praise instead of complaint. The children who grow up there can learn that God is good in every climate. And we ourselves can stop living as if our real life is always somewhere else.
David blessed the Lord at all times, even in a foreign court with his life in danger. Most of us are only dealing with drizzle. Perhaps we can manage a word of blessing too.
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