No longer land-lords!

While I dragged my feet, the Lord forged ahead. While I pondered and anguished, the Lord cleared the way. All praise and glory to His name, my renters are gone. I have the house I built for my wife and kids back in my sole possession. As I walk through it, I am filled with regrets. Why did I ever move from the place God provided for me, from the work of my hands, from these solid walls? I see the cordwood masonry wall behind the propane stove. The rounds and wedges of wood show the occasional 'k' written in black ink on their faces. My oldest son put those 'k's' there when he was little, marking out his favorite shapes in the wall we all built together. Now the wall is dirty and chipped, filled with rusty nails and staples that the renters used to hang posters and coats now long gone.

The Spirit's voice whispers in my ear. How can renting out property for usury be good and right if a fine home ends up like this after only 5 years? I look out the window at what used to be a pasture, now eaten down to bare dirt in some spots. A pasture ruined by a man who didn't own it, and therefore didn't care for it. The renter has no incentive to steward carefully, for he will never own these 4 walls and a roof. And the land-lord has no incentive to improve a place that won't be carefully and lovingly maintained. So, the property languishes; even as the land-lord grows richer in dollars, and the renter descends deeper into poverty and apathy. Surely this is an arrangement made in hell.

Never again. Already I am planning and improving, ordering this place of profound disorder. I will live here again; and I will steward this house, this land, in the fear of God my maker. And if I ever leave again, I will sell it, not rent it.