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A faithful presence of love in the absences of our city.

We Can Have an Open Door

Growing up my home was this great open space. My parents were super young and my dad managed a toy store, so the gathering place for friends and neighbors was the Edgar home. We would ride big wheels in the house over and over and over again. We would swim in the backyard pool trying to create a vortex. We would have sleepovers every weekend, sometimes with baseball friends, sometimes with neighborhood friends, sometimes with school friends. My parent’s home was an open home. As I looked around at my neighbor’s homes, this wasn’t the case. Their homes weren’t like mine. One kid or two might come over to play, but never a brood or a gaggle. There was never a whole house full of groms. But my house…it was always full.

You see, my parents made room. They were hospitable. They couldn’t afford it, but they did it. Every Halloween my parents throw a party, first with me and my sis and our friends, later with my sister’s kids and their friends, now with family and neighbors. On the fourth of July, my dad would bring home a barrel of fireworks and the entire neighborhood would either join in, each taking a turn setting them off, or they would watch and witness the spectacle at a safer distance, sometimes violating life and limb engaging in a bottle rocket war. These traditions have continued, year after year. My parents have had generations live in their home. My sister left and life brought her back with her two kids. They all left, and life brought my niece home with her daughter. My parents are always making room. My mom ran a day care out of our home for over 10 years, kids and parents in and out. The generation of neighborhood kids changed and instead of my friends coming over, now it was my niece and nephew’s friends. Different kids from different families, but the story remained the same; my parents and their commitment, the covenantal promises they made to each other becoming a safe place where others could dwell, their marriage existing for the common good.

I shared this quote in the sermon Sunday from David Matzo McCarthy: “Open families have loose and porous boundaries…the open household requires a sense of adventure and a willingness to welcome the unknown and to entertain the unmanageable. If we let down our guard, neighbors will be entering our homes as though they belong there.” My parents have let down their guard over and over again, and people have come in as if they belong there. As my parents have done this, as they shared their life and their home there have been costs. The cost of entertaining, the cost of having an open home has affected them. They have had fights about it, they have wanted more privacy at times, they have had to break up more fights than fights that have been started…this is all part of it. Open homes are costly. I’ll admit that I have not had always had an open home. My home has people in it, but I can be resentful of it. I can get frustrated at the cost. I can allow busyness to crowd openness out. I don’t make time for neighbors; I don’t always like their kids. I don’t like the kids who might be a poor influence or the neighbor who is odd. Sometimes, I think that my marriage to Danette must take priority over every other relationship that is birthed or shaped because of our marriage, so much so that I am not present in my regular life, because I am always trying to escape it. All of this keeps me from having an open home, from having a home that makes room. So, as I think about my parents, or Eric and Tammy Taylor from the show Friday Night Lights, as I compare my life to theirs…I am sad, ashamed, convicted. I have means that my parents never did, I have a calling that should translate, and I have a gaggle and brood of my own kids. And I have the Gospel.

The Gospel frees us in a culture that needs these sorts of homes…homes living in the power of promises…open homes…homes that can swallow the costs, because Jesus has done this for us. Jesus has made room. Jesus through his promises has provided us a space of flourishing. We can do it, not as a form of payback, but in the freedom and security of His work and His promises. We are secure. The economic concerns of the open home have a trust, achieved by the work of Jesus. We can risk. We can have an open door. We don’t have to always hit the escape hatch in our marriages to get more “us” time, more me time, more nuclear family time. We can live in these costly places where a greater number of people are welcomed, and where we have lesser privacies. We can do this because the Gospel has secured this very thing for us. Our marriages can be a place of flourishing for our households. Our promises can provide a safe place for our neighbor’s common good.

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