Porches and Perseverance

The wife and I stopped at a Braum’s ice cream store on the way home from evening church and got a hot fudge sundae. We were discussing the lesson we had just heard from a young man who was debuting as a speaker. He is a member of our church, and asked to be able to try his hand at speaking to the evening assembly. He did a great job, and we were talking about some of what he said.

We went just a few blocks with our sundaes to my sister’s house. I decided that whether or not she was home, we would sit on her enclosed porch and eat our sundaes. Sis was home, so she joined us on the porch.

She writes about her porch in her blog. It is a good place to congregate, visit, and just think. Sis has an older home with a large front porch that has been screened in and is very comfortable, especially in the evening.

I wonder how often we long for something that we can’t quite place or put our fingers on, and what we really need is a porch and an hour or so to just sit and ponder and visit. Modern lifestyles often don’t include time or space for such a porch, and we think it to be somewhat hokey in any event. But I think there’s a need for such a time and space in everyone’s life, from Warren Buffet and Bill Gates on down to the “least of these”.

Did we solve the world’s problems? No. Did we solve our own problems? No. But we did reconnect with each other and were able to sort out some things so that we could go into the week with a fresh perspective on some issues that at present seem to be rather intractable. And after all, isn’t that the thing? To keep on keeping on…running the race…finishing the course…that’s the thing. And porches can make all the difference in whether or not we’re successful in doing that.