If God lived on my street, I’m sure the house would be BIG.    It would have lots of rooms for all the widows and orphans who live there. It would be their home, not some institutional orphanage with bars on the windows.  I’m sure the rooms would have windows to let lots of light in.  The house would probably be bold and fixed up, not new and plastic.

There would be a nice white fence around the house, so that the children are safe inside.  It would have a gate that is easy to open, so that guests could come in.  No mean dog would bark and scare people there.

Lots of people would live in God’s house, I’m sure, because God doesn’t want to be alone.  He’s not a lonely God.  Nobody would cry alone in their rooms at night, or at the dinner table over a bowl of reheated canned soup.  No, all the people would eat together, and some would cook, and some would clean up, but they would all be together.

They would invite everyone on my street to dinner.  They would invite the lonely widow without a family in the small apartment down the street, and the immigrant lonely Russian man, and the teenagers who keep getting in trouble.  And the poor, homeless people who live in the park – yes– everybody.  There was a place for everyone at the table, but not everyone came.  The important peple never came, because they were too busy doing important things… They could have come, but they didn’t.

God’s house would be clean.  God’s yard would be clean.  In fact, all the trash on the street would get picked up.  You could tell someone cared.

God is love, and love is God.  I think — if I lived where Love lived, that I could change my bad habits.  I could even be honest about the bad things I had done, and then I could change.  I bet everybody who lived at God’s house says “I’m sorry” a lot and “I forgive you” even more…

If you wanted to come over, you’d be welcome.  All the people inside would stop and talk to you.  If it was getting late, God would invite you to spend the night.  He’d even let you move in to His house, if you needed to.  And you could bring another person, too. The front door was never locked — and you didn’t even need to knock to come in.

It would be a place to belong, a place to be for a long time, a place where the people belong to God, and He belongs to them.

I would move in and live with Love – if God lived on my street.