Dwell: Seek God’s Face at HomeSample

Ivy in the Walls

The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.

Proverbs 14:1

Ever since reading the children’s book Madeline, I have been enchanted by the look of vines growing on a house. Vines make a house look sophisticated and beautiful, aristocratic somehow.

When we moved into a new house with a broad face, I knew just how to accentuate that. Vines!

I did some research and found the name of a vine I loved, one that was green in the summer and copper in the autumn. Then I asked some friends, “Does anyone know anything about growing Virginia creeper?”

“Don’t do it!” most of them told me. “Yes, yes, beautiful—all right, we’ll give you that. But it is so invasive that you will never get it out once started! It not only grows along the face of your house, but in the cracks, under the siding (which loosens it up), and into the window casements (which makes them leak). You may pull, and you may spray, but once it’s there, it’s the owner, and you’re the tenant.”

So I changed my plans—no Virginia creeper. I’d known that it was strong—that a simple ivy could, over time, strangle a tree. I had not thought it was strong enough to rip my home apart. But it was.

Sin, it seems to me, works like that in our lives. It presents itself as something desirable and beautiful—or at the very least, harmless (Genesis 3:6). So I invite it in, welcoming whatever excitement it seems to bring my way—till it starts to wreak the havoc it always does (James 1:15).

If I catch it in time, I can rip it out before it does harm. But that’s not always possible. The best thing is not to plant it at all and avoid the pain it will most surely bring.

*This devotion is taken from Day 23 of Sandra Byrd’s book, Dwell: 90 Days at Home with God.