My daughter was really pleased when she chanced upon her six-year-old praying: “Dear Lord, please let mummy buy a house with a swimming pool for us. Amen.”
“Oh, no! Not a swimming pool please Lord,” my daughter pleaded. Swimming pools cost a fortune to maintain even if it’s not used in autumn, winter and early spring as it’s too cold.
The little one has a knack for praying and soon her mummy begins to have second thoughts about not having a swimming pool. She talked it over with her husband and both thought maybe it’s not a bad idea to buy a house with a swimming pool. After all there are five in the family. The girl is already swimming like a fish and her younger brother has started swimming lessons. It would not be long before the seven-month- old takes to the water. Yes, it makes sense to buy a house with a pool after all.
They live in Sydney and property prices are sky-high. They can’t get anything less than a quarter of a million (Aussie dollars that is) if God decides to answer their daughter’s prayer for a swimming pool. Since my daughter is staying home to look after her three mites, her husband would have to bear the mortgage alone, possibly for the next 30 years. And that’s a life time.
Having a roof over heads is a basic human right. But we spend our entirely life fixated on owning our dream house instead of just a plain roof. I remember, once upon time, my wife and I were toying with the idea of having a dream home. It began without much drama. Since there were only three of us, we just needed a nice little cozy place. Of course, it would be nice if our dream home could be in quiet a cul-de-sac. It didn’t take very long for our little dream home to come with a little brook running through it and a long and winding garden path looping the quaint-looking house.
That was our dream home. The real one we are living in now is a little 850 sq.ft flat. Yes, there’s a common swimming pool so I guess that’s why the developers call it an apartment. My wife and I have moved house 24 times from the time we were born so we are contend to not to pursue our dream home. By the way, we are in the midst of packing up and ready to make our twenty-fifth move; this time to Thailand. Six weeks thereafter, we are scheduled to relocate to Indonesia for another three years or so.
Houses affect our lives more than anything else. We spend a life-time chalking up mortgages just to have a roof over our heads. And we are always on the lookout for a second and a retirement home as well while we are at it.
Even on our way to our graves we are still planning to buy some choice real estate in the world beyond. Some, by choice or by circumstances, may buy a columbarium to live in an urn in a pigeon hole. Others may opt to live in a rose garden of a memorial park and yet others still may make a grand statement by living in opulent graves complete with statues and expensive headstones.
It was just a few days ago that I helped conduct a funeral service for my wife’s relative who passed away in an old folks’ home, or a destitute home as what these public homes truly are. Her husband died a while ago and they have no children and that’s how she landed up in his home.
She came from a fairly well to do family and had lived in all sorts of houses from bangalows to shop houses and ordinary house. She was even living in London at one time.
In my short funeral message, I reminded those present that it does not matter now what sort of homes the deceased had been living in the past as she had gone to a better home. A dream one not made by human hands. Therein lies our hope.
The Micah Mandate is a Christian-based public interest advocacy ministry that seeks a transformation of our nation through justice, mercy and humility.
