My Home is not an Open Home if you
think that an Open Home is one that has doors that I do not lock every night
lest robbers make good of what the Lord has given to my stewardship.
My Home is not an Open Home if you
think that an Open Home is one where boundaries need not be honoured and
privacy that need not be protected.
My home is not an Open Home if you
think that anyone can come in and go as they will. I welcome people to come, to
stay, to talk and to dine with us, but I desire that they would call up to fix
a mutually convenient time – especially in this age when we have all the means
to do so.
But my home is an Open Home in that
you will still be welcomed if you come unannounced and you will get to share in
what we have to eat. We won’t serve you a five course dinner. If you wish you may
use the provisions in my store to cook a dish for yourself. You are also
welcome to share in the household chores, but there is no obligation at all. You
can read my books and listen to the songs on the system if you wish. You can
use my computer to catch up with your mail and check Facebook. You can sleep
and rest. If there aren’t enough beds for all of you, there are many mats and
pillows at my home that you use to make yourself comfortable on the floor. You
can wash and iron your clothes. You can learn some simple cooking tips from my
wife. May be we can go shopping together – for the necessities of life and
window shopping for the luxuries of life. I can give you some money if I am
convinced that you have a genuine emergency…otherwise I usually don’t give,
lest I teach you the bad habit of being unduly dependent on others.
My home is generally a very silent
place, but you can make the noise you wish – you may sing, shout and yell at
the top of your voices. If there is something you do that I do not like, I will
tell you upfront – you can rest assured of that. What I would love most is if
you would open up your heart and share your thoughts and your concerns…if we
could ponder on the options and pray…ahh what joy it would be if we could open
the Scriptures and see what the Lord has to say.
If you are going to be at my home,
you are going to witness how we live and make a living, how we manage to make
both ends meet – not only in terms of money but also in terms of what I
consider to be the valuable of all resources – time. You will see how we make
time for the important things in life and how we say ‘No’ to the demands that
take us away from our focused goals in life. You will see how we love and
discipline our children. We try not to wear masks – we have been working on
that for many years now.
My home is also open in a virtual sense
because of all the advanced forms of connectivity that we have today. Text me
at any time of the night or day and sometime you should be getting a reply if indeed
a reply was warranted. Call me between 9 pm to 11 pm – that is the time I have
set apart to be available for you on my cell phone. Unless I am out of station
I normally do reply to emails too. In some ways I prefer emails and texting to telephone
calls, because they give me to freedom to revert when I am free to do so. But
listening to your voice and talking things out can make a whole lot of
difference.
Many have come to my home simply to
stay, to talk, to laugh or to download and cry. In as much as they who came
were blessed (hopefully) more so were we. We have never regretted the manner in
which we have kept our home both closed and open with delicate deliberate discretion. But we know of others whose homes have been
more wide open than ours – what a blessing it may have been. There is much to
learn from such homes, but I only hope their openness did not cause undue
stress on the family. We also know of others who have remained secluded in
their own closed homes. We cannot stand to judge them for they may have had
their own valid reasons. Nevertheless, they have forfeited from themselves so much
of the blessing of being an Open Home in this journey of life. May they have
the courage to experiment in moving out of their comfort zone.
The door bell has just rung…somebody
has come…let me open the closed door. Ooops! I am in my Bermuda. Is that ok?
Yes, it is!
