In the days when community was richer and faith was deeper, a new home would be blessed and its doorsills anointed with oil, or honey, or blood. Before the explosion of churches, some homes even had altars. The first temple, in fact, was called the Mishkan: a place of divine dwelling. In English we call it a tabernacle: a tent. The first church in the Abrahamic faiths, in other words, was a home. God chose to live among his people. Home, in this earlier understanding was more than a venue for eating and sleeping. It was a holy place. 

Somewhere along the way we forgot this. We began to think that God was out there--in heaven, a sunset, an ornate temple, a megachurch. We forgot that he has always come to us where we are, to dwell with us. We began to think of him as being somewhere else, and told ourselves that we had to get dressed up, put on smiles, and go out to find him. We forgot that home was meant to be a sacred place because we were meant to be sacred. 

We have made the home a luxury living and playing space, and forsaken some of the sacred in our lives. In the midst of greater comfort, we complain that we don't eat meals together as often as we should, and that our children are lured by distractions--computers, television, telephones--away from the family, and into their separate rooms. Perhaps part of the reason is that we have outsourced sacredness to our churches, and in so doing we have relinquished the sanctifying power of the home. We have forsaken much of what binds us to God. The altars and anointed doorways are gone, and now we must search for him in the shadows and corners.

Tony Woodlief, Somewhere More Holy: Stories from A Bewildered Father, Stumbling Husband, Reluctant Handyman, and Prodigal Son, pp. 30-31