Sketching the House on the Back of an Envelope

Picture a grandmother who keeps a brown envelope in her Bible. On the back, in pencil, is a rough drawing of a house: a square for the living room, two smaller squares for bedrooms, a long rectangle across the front marked “VERANDAH” in capitals. There is even a little circle for a water tank. She drew it decades ago, when she was renting a single room and cleaning other people’s houses.

The house she eventually built did not look much like the sketch. It was smaller in some ways and bigger in others. The verandah went round the side, not the front. But when her family clear out her things many years later, the envelope is still there, soft from handling, tucked into the pages near the Psalms. Many Caribbean families could tell a version of that story.

Where every house begins

Every home starts in someone’s imagination. Long before a surveyor sets pegs or a mason lays a block, somebody pictures it: where the kitchen window will look out, where the children will sleep, where the Sunday dinner table will stand. For many families, especially those who have rented for years or started with very little, that act of imagining is itself a kind of faith.

Paul ends a great prayer in his letter to the Ephesians with these words: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory” (Ephesians 3:20-21, NKJV). It is a remarkable phrase. Not merely able to do what we ask, or even what we think. Able to go beyond it.

Notice, though, that the verse assumes we are asking and thinking. It presumes people who pray about their lives, who picture a future, who bring hopes to God. There is something in the posture of a woman drawing a verandah on an envelope that fits this verse well.

Imagining without grasping

Of course, imagination about houses can go wrong. It can turn into envy, as we scroll past other people’s renovated kitchens. It can turn into pressure, when a family builds far beyond its means because the picture in their heads has to be exactly realised. It can even turn into a kind of bargaining with God, as though the right amount of faith would guarantee the four-bedroom house with the pool.

Ephesians 3:20 does not promise that God will build our sketch. It promises that He is able to do more than we imagine, which is not always the same thing. Sometimes “more” looks like a different house than we pictured, in a place we did not expect, arriving later than we hoped. Sometimes it looks like a rented flat that becomes, over the years, full of such love and welcome that no one visiting would guess it was not owned.

Healthy imagination holds a picture with open hands. It says: this is what I hope for, Lord, and I will work towards it, but I trust You to shape it.

The practical side of dreaming

Imagining a home is not idle. It can give direction to everyday choices. A woman like the one with the envelope saves from every pay packet. She joins a partner hand with the women at church. She asks questions of a man who built his own house. She walks past plots of land on Sunday afternoons and notices which ones have water nearby.

If you have a picture of a future home, you might:

• Write it down or draw it, however roughly, and bring it to God in prayer.
• Talk about it as a household. Dreams that only one person holds tend to cause conflict later.
• Ask what small step today would move towards it: a savings habit, a conversation with a lender, learning about land titles.
• Revisit the picture every year or so, and be willing to change it.

Beyond the walls

Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3 is not mainly about houses. Just before that famous verse, he prays that believers would be rooted and grounded in love, and would grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is (Ephesians 3:17-19). The “more than we imagine” is first about that love.

Perhaps that is why the envelope lives in a Bible rather than a drawer. The house was a real hope, and God honoured it in His way. But it sat among the Psalms, near words about a God who has been His people’s dwelling place in all generations (Psalm 90:1). The drawing was of a house. The faith behind it was about a home.

For reflection

• What picture of home am I carrying, and have I brought it honestly to God?
• Am I holding that picture with open hands, or gripping it so tightly that it causes me or my family strain?

A prayer: Lord, You are able to do far more than I can ask or imagine. I bring You my hopes for a home. Give me the courage to dream, the discipline to work, and the humility to let You reshape the plan. Above all, root my family in Your love. Amen.