When the sun rose over my kitchen, it was alone. The living room, bless its dear little heart, had run off with a model home company and the bedroom had joined the circus. The bathroom had moved down the street two blocks to a garden property with good ventilation; and nobody knew where the den was.

A kitchen, by itself, is not really good for a great deal. Cooking, yes, and eating. Sometimes projects or writing letters. Not really much else. It also felt a little lonely, a small kitchen standing on the property like that, surrounded by foundation remnants. A far cry from a full, functional house. And not a likely candidate for entertaining or hospitality, let alone sale or rental.

I tried to make do, but it was hard to be creative when I was constantly missing the other pieces of home (no toilet, no makeup mirror, no bed, no closet). The knife drawer became the sock-and-knife drawer and the microwave became my alarm clock.

And then one morning God showed up at the kitchen table. "You can't stay here," I told him. "I don't even have a bathroom." "You forget who I am," God said. I could see my error, but my original point was still true, so I tried a different tactic. "You don't understand," I said. "I'm trying to pull myself together and start rebuilding — I can't have people around a construction site." "You forget who I am," God said again, looking amused.

"God!" I said, getting desperate. "I'm stressed out, irritable, and have no energy for trying to offer you divine hospitality. You're going to want to talk about Serious Things, and I can't even focus on one thing for 30 seconds."

God was quiet for a moment. "You haven't forgotten who I am, have you?" he finally said. "It appears you never knew."