Hay House Tour Derailed: God Sustains

photo @ en.wikipedia.org

As my husband and I celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary earlier this week, we spent some time touring locally and enjoying places we've never been. It seems quite ironic that a person could live in the same area for 38 years and yet never enjoy the local history! However, that is the case with me. I'm so glad we took a moment in time to do so. Now I can say I've been there and oh, how much we enjoyed ourselves! 

We toured the beautiful Italian Renaissance styled home in Macon, called the Hay House. It was also known as the Palace of the South and was built in the late 1850's. (Click here to see pics and learn more about the Hay House.) I especially love this style and period in time. I don't know, something about the symmetry and balance seems safe and peaceful to me and everything just oozes with art; it was my absolute favorite period to study in Humanities class during my high school years. 

This home was way ahead of its time for the Macon area. It had hot and cold running water, a speaker-tube system, central heat, and an in-house kitchen. Yet, the place I found most interesting was a room on the ground floor. While I can't remember what the tour guide referred to it being called back in the day, it was actually a pantry of sorts where meat and other foods were stored. What was amazing to me about this room, and stood out boldly in my mind, was the fact that it was the only room in this magnificent 24-room home with bars on the windows. You know, the kind of bars put there for protection of the contents within. It's true, other rooms held fine china, boasted of beautiful tapestries and displayed priceless pieces of sculpture and artwork, yet these rooms were not safely protected to the same level as the pantry. Something struck a chord within me and lights and sirens went off in my head...

...NOTHING in this house was as important or more valuable as the life sustaining properties of the contents within this room. (That's a fancy way of saying, "I'm not letting anything happen to my grub!) I totally disembarked from the commentary of our guide and muttered silently to myself, "Hmm, they protected and valued what would sustain them - food. The other "pretty things" in life weren't protected, but that which sustained them was - at all cost." Without the necessary elements to sustain life being present, nothing else would matter anyhow. Then I thought: what sustains me? The best and only answer I could think up was GOD! 

I thought of how God is the most important part of my life and the part that should be carefully guarded at all costs. I thought of how God sustained His grumbling children in the desert. The Bible says, 

"Yea, forty years didst thou sustain them in the wilderness, 

so that they lacked nothing; their clothes waxed not old, 

and their feet swelled not." (Nehemiah 9:21) 

What a beautiful picture of a loving God, who cares for and upholds us, even in the midst of our hardheadedness and times of complaining. He sustains us!

As the words of our sweet tour guide began to slowly penetrate my mind once again, I thought to myself: Yes, it is true, only God can satisfy my every longing and supply my every need. Only He can sustain me. And that's worth putting bars in the windows for. 

Hope you enjoyed this quick informal tour today. If you enjoyed it, please take a moment to click below this post to share it with your friends by email or on FB, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. We all need to be reminded to protect our most valuable resource - what sustains us. God bless~