You’re Invited

Kitchen people or front door people

Our last house was an old house – probably close to a hundred years old! And I’ll be the first to admit that it didn’t look that great from the outside. I mean, it looked nice, don’t get me wrong, but it’s only if I invited you in and showed you the upstairs that you saw the real beauty. The upstairs had this beautiful hardwood floor and doorways and railings that were really the crown jewel of the house. But if I didn’t invite you in, really into my home, you’d never know.

Our backyard was another selling point. From the front of the house you’d never guess that there was plenty of room for a strawberry bed, rhubarb, and a sandbox! I’m not much of a landscape person, but I worked on it and it looked good. But again, you had to be invited to the back of the house to see it. You have to go through a not so great kitchen and usually a messy living room to see the real beauty.

Recently, one of our deacons opened the service talking about kitchen people or front door people. There are people that you invite into the front door and maybe let them sit in your formal living room, probably a place that you have cleaned before you invited them over, maybe stuffed some laundry in another room. And then you have kitchen people – those people that you invite to come on back into your kitchen. Maybe the kitchen where the dirty dishes are piled in the sink and there are crumbs all over the stove. But you invite them to pull up a chair anyway, sit, and have coffee, and share life and you both ignore the mess.

Many people look at me and see a good, Christian mom. One who’s always done the right thing, stood by her convictions, no major mistakes. If you only see my outward perfections, you miss the beauty of what Christ has done for me. You have to be invited into my life to see what Christ has done. That’s what this blog is about. Come, sit around my table. I’ll share my story. I’ll share what I’ve learned in the tough times and the good times. I’ll open my home to you. You are all invited in.