Tell the guards to open up the gate!

How often do you come drive home, pull into the garage, and then shut the door? How often is the only time you come out of your house it's to walk straight to the mailbox or on the sit back deck where you are surrounded by your fenced in backyard? How often have you nodded your head to the neighbor that lives in the white house, oh you know, the one that has the black jeep and two teenagers? How many times have you started a conversation with the owner of the black jeep? Do you even know his or her name?

We are so guilty of this. We is talking about my husband and I. We know one set of our neighbors well enough to walk into their house without thinking twice about knocking.  We've lived in the same house for 8 years. It's beyond sad. 

We are called to live in community and our church family lives this out better than most churches I've known or interacted with. We are blessed by it but with this blessing comes a sense of contentment. A sense of contentment that needs shaken up a bit. Because contentment is often a slippery slope.  I talked about needing a neon sign that flashes sometimes to get the point across? Well, that neon flashing sign came by way of a for sale sign in the neighbors yard. You know, the neighbors that I nodded my head to the other day? The neighbors whose names I don't even know? 

Something that has been convicting this family of ours here lately is our comfortably in community. We have been blessed with such a tight community that we consider them family. But we've become comfortable. It's easy and amazing and a blessing to send a quick message and instantly have dinner guests (not guests, companions is more like it) and just spend the evening laughing and loving on one another with ease. 

It's time to open the gate of our fence and perhaps linger a little longer at our mailbox. Or perhaps it's an intentional walk across the road and a knock on the door and an invitation to a cup of coffee or some hotdogs on the grill. It's time for the garage door to not come down with such ease so quickly after we get home. 

1 John 4:11 "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." (ESV)