The Winchester Mystery House

“Nestled in the suburbs of San Jose, California, is an interesting tourist attraction: an estate built by the heir of the Winchester rifle fortune. In 1884, a wealthy widow name Sarah L. Winchester began a thirty-eight-year construction project guided by a superstitious fear. Evidently, Mrs. Winchester was convinced by a medium that continuous building would appease the evil spirits of those killed by the famous ‘gun that won the West’ and help her attain eternal life. So Sarah kept carpenters’ hammers pounding twenty-hour a day. The Victorian mansion came to the filled with so many unexplained oddities that it is now know as the Winchester Mystery House

. Even thou it has 160 rooms, three elevators, forty staircases, and forty-seven fireplaces, its size alone does not account for the architectural marvel-what does so is the bizarre purposelessness of the design. Stairs lead into the ceiling; windows decorate the floor, and door open into blank walls! Random features reflect excessive creativity, energy, and expense, from exquisite hand inlaid parquet floors to Tiffany art glass windows. Busyness, not blueprints, defined success.

The Winchester Mystery House is an accurate picture of what a church looks like in the absence of vision; there is lots of activity with little progress or purpose. Interesting programs and exquisite sermons do not necessarily lead to a meaningful whole. Structure exists for structure itself and not for life. “ Mancini, Will, Church Unique

How easy to be consumed by other than the vision. Maybe doing good things, but is it what God called you to do?