Tourists and Locals

We are in the midst of tourist season here in the tri-cities.  I have mixed feelings about this.  For those of us who are locals and live here year round, it can be a real inconvenience.  Traffic on Beacon Blvd. and M-104 doubles during the summer months.  We see a lot of out-of-state license plates (when they miss traffic signs and attempt impossible left turns that no local would try).  As the Coast Guard Festival begins in a couple weeks things really get crazy.  I tend to stay north of the bridge as much as possible this week.  Yet I recognize that we need these out-of-towners to support our local economy and provide jobs.  Being host to the Coast Guard Festival is a huge boost for local merchants and businesses.  Busy-ness is the price you pay for living in a resort town.  When you take this into consideration, we should do our best to be accommodating and hospitable.

It strikes me that church folks in general can act like locals.  We’re familiar with the kingdom of God.  We know the shortcuts and where to make left turns and where not to.  The presence of not-Christian people or people who are different from us can be inconvenient.  They don’t always know what we mean when we talk about life in the kingdom.  And yet these “tourists” are the very reason we exist.  The primary purpose of the Church is to announce God’s reign over all things to all people.  We exist to announce this to the tourists.  We hope that by God’s grace they too will one day be locals.  It may be frustrating and inconvenient at times, but we in the Church should do our best to show the same love that Jesus showed to us when we were tourists.