Is this all there is? What happened to all the dreams of revival? All the hopes for our children? I am 71 and it seems like life has gone by in the blink of an eye. So many prayers prayed! So many unanswered. So many hopes have packed up and left town. Like an unrelenting tide, death and time have silently swept away those who mentored me. Is this all there is?
No. This life is only the porch of heaven, a brief time stay on the porch of eternity. My life has been blessed. God’s grace, help, and favor has been a shady porch on a hot Kansas day. His love has been a glass of ice-tea; his voice is the voice of a friend, tried and true.
But as wonderful as the porch is, it is not the house. The winter winds batter the porch and the wooden chairs, even the rockers, are hard after a while. On the summer nights we might delight in the fireflies, but in the winter we long for the hearth. We long for the door to open.
Here on the porch, we pour out our lives in service of Jesus, knowing our story is only one of thousands, and that all these years are only the preface of the book, the porch of the house of God. On the porch we suffer the heat and cold; we long for the rest offered in the house. We long to sit at the table with the Lord of the house and hear his laughter shake the walls.
I believe the last of a believer’s years, as troubled and painful as they can be, are like the mud-rooms of old farmhouses. Sometimes these rooms were connected to the front or back porch. Here muddy boots and wet coats could be kicked off. If on the back porch, there was often a sink and some Lava soap for scrubbing off the grease or manure.
The last years of our lives scrub our souls. The deaths of parents and friends clear away the clutter of worldly values and clarifies what matters. Suffering, especially the suffering of those we love, scours away our selfishness. Our own pains and mortality make us long to enter the house of Jesus—to be absent from this body and present with our Lord. The mudroom of our suffering offers few comforts beyond our cleansing, but it is here that we are made ready for all the joys and comforts of God’s house.
No, this is not all there is. It is hard many days and glorious a few, but it is only the porch. The lights of the house are on; the aroma of the feast fills the air.
