Feeling Lonely? Go Back to the Front Porch

Last week while in North Carolina for someone's surgery, I was standing alone on a sidewalk getting ready to cross the street.  A man walked up to me and began talking, "Hey what you doing?"   I said, "Nothing.  What are you doing?"  He responded, "Oh, just standing here talking to you."  I thought to myself, "This dude is weird!"  He had some kind of speech problem, which made it difficult to understand him.  That is not what made him appear strange to me.  What made him seem a little "off" was the fact that he walked up to me and immediately began a conversation that included some personal questions.  Such as, "Do you work around here?"  When I answered, "No, I'm from Oklahoma", he wanted to know why I was in North Carolina.  When I told him someone in my church was having surgery, he asked, "What kind of surgery?"

Needless to say, I was taken a little off guard by all of this.  I could feel myself moving farther away from him as our game of "20 Questions" continued.  Finally, I told him I had to leave to go check on my wife who was in recovery following her surgery.  He said, "Okay, Marc.  Great to talk with you." As I walked away, my thoughts of "how strange that guy was" began to give way to other thoughts.  In particular, why was I so uncomfortable talking to this guy?  Yes, the way he approached me was a little abnormal, and the man himself was kind of weird (I'm sure he thought the same of me).  The reason I was uncomfortable is because we have become a disjointed society.   

Remember the Andy Griffith Show?  They hung out a lot on the front porch.  They spoke with their neighbors.  Everyone knew everyone.  Today, we have given up our front porch for the back porch.  We have moved to more private, less open lives.  And to add to the back porch mentality, many of us have even put up a privacy fence around our backyard.  We have become disjointed...detached from those around us.    I am not suggesting we literally move back to the front porch, but rather that we would take on the "front porch" mindset.  We need to be more open with others, more connected.  We need people.  Jane Howard said, "Call it a clan, call it a tribe, call it a network, call it a family.  Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one."  Think about it, God created Eve for Adam.  God understood that we need close relationships with other people, not just with Him.  It is time for us to open ourselves up, and move back to the front porch!