My Front Porch

I love it sometimes when things that I am reading come together. I take it as a sign that I am on the right track. The beginning of something. A little bit ago I wrote about a book I started called UnChristian. I don't know if I would say it is a eye opener, but it confirms many of the things I feel about the misrepresentation that is currently behind the tag Christian I will explain why I say misrepresentation in a sec). The other book I picked up for the first time (I know I am nearly a decade behind everyone, but I wasn't chosen by that book until now) Blue like Jazz by Donald Miller. These two books go together like lamb and tuna fish.
UnChristian talks about how the we as Christians are representing our own name sake (Jesus) and Blue shares thoughts about what Christianity should be (it reminds me of Mere Christianity). There is a section where Don Miller is speaking about how him and a campus group set up a confessional booth in the middle of a well known anti Christian campus. The only trick was that they were not taking confessions they were giving them. They were apologizing not for the ways others have misrepresented their faith (although they mention how embarrassed they were for those things), such things as the Crusades, Slavery, Missionaries wiping out entire indigenous people, Manifest Destiny, Salem Witch trials (ok that wasn't a big one but I think someone is owed an apology). But they would talk about how they personally have not lived out the message and mission of Jesus (to seek, love, serve, the least the last and the lost).
I was thinking about these two books the other day as I was driving through a neighborhood and I started to notice the houses around me. I didn't like them, they were big and glorious and looked perfect, but none of them had front porches (I have had a thing for wrap around front porches). Every house had an immaculate deck on the back (that was filled with other toys: pool, hot tub, etc.) but all they had was a front door with a step. I don't know when front porches went out of style but I really want to go back to those times. Because what you have with a front porch is a gathering place, you see people as they are going and as they are coming, you can sit and carry a conversation with someone across the street. Now it is get into your house as fast as you can.
Well as I drove through I was thinking that our houses are very much like how many Christians (me included) live their faith. We don't have any front porch's any more, we seclude ourselves to what we do on Sunday's and we talk about how great it would be to go to Africa and cure HIV/AIDS. We talk a lot but here is the thing I keep finding all of that talk is just hot air and it truly amounts to nothing. Much like the morning mist it will dissipate with the first rays of light.
I have notices many people building front porch's, those who desire to see people who we pass and neglect on our sprint into our castles. I so long desire to be one of those people, I have been convicted in my own life that I am not living with a front porch, that I am not inviting those outside of my safe haven into my life. I suppose that if I were to confess I would say that I truly desire to serve God but my selfishness causes me to hesitate, I talk about helping the poor but and I will as long as there is nothing good on tv. I say I am concerned about spreading the Gospel, but the reality is I am to busy thinking about what apartment I would like to move into, or what car I would like to buy. Because of my position I sometimes feel that I am doing enough for the kingdom, but in the end I am just as lazy, forgetful and uninterested as some of my students. I can talk a good game, but the actions of my life would scream something different.
I am in the pursuit of now building a front porch and much like how I challenged our whole congregation to last Sunday, to open my eyes and see the needs, hurts, pains that are around me.

At least those are all my thoughts at the time.

CJ