“Where do you live?” As a pastor’s wife I have had to learn to make conversation with strangers as I’ve sought to welcome visitors into our home and church. That question is one of my go-to’s in order to break the ice. Everyone lives somewhere, right? So, it’s usually a pretty safe bet that you can start talking to someone by asking that question.
But…what if your answer to that question was “I live on a platform up in the sky. It’s quite a view and pretty private, too.” If your name was Simeon Stylites, then that would be your extraordinary answer to a seemingly ordinary question.
Simeon Stylites, also known as Simeon the Elder, was a Syrian hermit who lived most of his life on a platform set on a pillar in order to focus on God and prayer and maintain a private life away from others. According to the online encyclopedia Britannica, his platform was about 11 feet square and was raised about fifty feet above ground. (see: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Simeon-Stylites )
How would you like to live in that square footage!?
I’m sure you’d say that is a bit crazy, that you’ve never lived anywhere that small. At least most of us in North America can say that, although not some of our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world, but…maybe you have and didn’t realize it.
A proverb that is repeated twice in Scripture philosophizes that “It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife” (Proverbs 21:9; 25:4).
Last I checked, a corner of a rooftop is smaller than a platform 11 feet square. It would be much more uncomfortable, in fact!
And yet…I have to ask myself the question. Does my husband ever feel as if he’s living on the pinnacle of a roof with me in his house?
According to other translations of the verse, the kind of woman who makes a man feel as if he’s trying to balance on a roof corner can also be described as contentious, nagging, fault-finding, brawling, always arguing. Ouch!
A nagging wife is not something we ever aspire to be, but we do tend to drift into it. When my husband and I were first married, I tended towards this (oh, yes…I still do at times!), but I would never have called it nagging.
I would have said I was persistently encouraging him to do the things I thought he should be doing.
One point of contention with us was that I thought my husband needed to be doing his quiet time more often or at a certain time or in a certain way. That is a good thing to do, isn’t it? After all, we are supposed to sharpen each other in marriage. Is it not my job to remind him of these things so he can be the godly husband he needs to be?
Thankfully, my husband was patient with his new wife, and he gently admonished me that the best way I could spur him on spiritually was not to “persistently encourage” him with my reminders to do those things. The best way for me to encourage my husband was to be a quiet example and do those things myself. (Sounds a bit like 1 Peter 3:1 where unbelieving husbands are won over without a word.)
I never forgot that gentle correction because it revealed to me that what I called persistent encouragement was really my looking to judge him from a fault-finding and contentious spirit. It didn’t have much to do with real concern for his spiritual life. Sure, that was there, but I was going about it all wrong.
Instead of nagging, I needed to pray, but not just for him. I needed to focus on my own prayer life and spiritual growth, and in doing so I would actually see the results I was looking for in my husband. How? Through prayer God changed my husband and me in a way that is much more effective than any well- (or ill-) timed lecture, given over and over and over.
Sounds a bit like a drip of rain on a roof corner. Oh, yeah…a roof; it’s not a great place to live.
But a wide, spacious house—that sounds like a true dwelling place.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations (Psalm 90:1—emphasis mine).
I’ll sign a lease on that kind of place. Does anyone have a pen?
