What a beautiful time of year. For me, my front porch becomes holy ground—a place where I meet with God and let Him slow me down long enough to notice what He’s been showing me all along. The breeze moves through the trees, birds carry on like they’ve got nothing to prove, and the light falls just right across the yard. It brings to mind the words of Isaiah: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory.” And I’ll be honest—I’d be hard pressed to find anywhere more glorious than my front porch this time of year, and I’ve done my share of traveling.
Out there, I feel something that’s getting rare these days: contentment. The kind that doesn’t need improving or scrolling or comparing. Just being.
But lately, I’ve noticed something uncomfortable. I’ve been missing it. Sitting in the middle of beauty… and not seeing it. Because I’m on my phone.
It started small—checking headlines, staying “informed.” Then I added a news subscription, and suddenly I wasn’t just glancing at the world—I was submerged in it. Conflict, outrage, opinions stacked on opinions. It didn’t take long to notice the shift in me. More irritable. More reactive. More convinced I was right about things that, honestly, I don’t fully understand.
And that’s when it hit me: this might be part of what’s going wrong for all of us.
We’ve got big opinions about everything—politics, culture, how people should live, what they should believe. And many of us who follow Christ assume our opinions line up with His. But if we’re being honest, that alignment might not be as tight as we think.
Jesus had a way of cutting through that kind of certainty. He talked about removing the plank from our own eye before pointing out the speck in someone else’s. He said, “Blessed are the merciful,” and “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Not the loudest. Not the most convincing. The peacemakers.
So here’s the question that’s been pressing on me: do my opinions actually produce mercy and peace? Or do they produce distance, division, and a quiet sense of superiority?
Because when I sit on my front porch—really sit, not scroll—and I become aware of God’s presence, something changes. The edge softens. The need to be right fades. And what rises up instead is a clear sense that I don’t have this all figured out. Not even close.
And maybe that’s the point.
We say Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. But if that’s true, then truth isn’t something I possess—it’s Someone I follow. That shifts things. It humbles things. It steadies things.
Because here’s what I know: the God who keeps birds in the air, feeds the squirrels, grows flowers despite my total lack of gardening skill, and holds the stars in place is not rattled by current events. He’s not scrambling. He’s not anxious.
And if He’s not anxious, maybe I don’t need to be either.
My front porch reminds me of what’s real. It calls me back to trust. Back to humility. Back to the kind of faith that doesn’t need to win arguments to be secure.
At the end of the day, I keep coming back to this: there is a God who loves us, who holds all things together, and who proved it on a cross stretched across time.
And maybe I need to take my cue from the cardinal singing in the tree in front of me—singing to the One who has it all figured out.
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