This is a response to the one-word prompt “Gate” by “The Daily Post.”
Do you want to connect with your community and those around you? Do want to help grow your church, business, and/or organization you are a part of? Then you need to make sure that your “door” is always “#open.” That is, in order to be inviting and attract people to you and/or your organization, then you need to have an openness to you/your organization’s personality.
It does not #matter how much effort you put into getting the word out there about your organization, if once people “get there” they don’t “feel” invited. As humans, we are all “social animals” that is we crave social interaction and attention. Thus, if one goes about life with an “open door” personality saying “come let’s have a conversation” then one is more likely to make friends, connections, and bring in new people for one’s organization.
Being open also shows others that you are “real” and “authentic” and are more likely to connect on their level. There is just something to be said about someone who is “open” or joyful and shows it. A good example is my church’s new pastor, she always has this “joist air” about her, and you can’t help but feel it and catch some of that joyfulness as well, in conversations. Having and showing an open door is very much like a “wave of sunshine” falling on you after you get out after falling into a lake or river of freezing cold water.
When we meet new people and/or join an orginization, we want, no we need to feel invited and wanted. 
We can’t feel that when the person/people on the other end are either ambelvelent or just for some reson unwelcoming. In welcoming people in through the “open door” one needs to be more and do more than just saying welcome and directing them “inside.” There needs to be a real ethustism that just “bleeds” from you into the air around you and the peole you are welcoming.
In getting to know others and/or welcoming them into your home, church, orginization, etc., you need to actually get to know them; to get to know their likes, dislikes, needs, and so forth. Or at the very least make it known that you are willing, able, and actually wanting to do so. When you do this, then they will want to get to know you in the same way, and thus you have the begenings of a real, long, and fruitful friendship, and/or very productive working relastionship.
We are very much in a divided world to day, in our politics, faith and so forth that we are unwilling to “open our #doors” and let people in that don’t confirm to our own beliefs and expectations.
Unfortinatly, that only creates and feeds an ever growing cycle of more devisiveness and devsion. This is not the natural and atended state of human behavior/exsistence. We as social aniamls, are ment to get along and be happy together. That is how God attended life for us and wants life to be for us; for us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind; and to Love your neibor as yourself.” Matthew 22:36-39. We can do much to correct this imbalence in our world and daily lives, in our commmunities/societies if we just learn to “open our doors” more to others.
So do you have and present an “open door” to others when first meeting them and in all your interactions with them? Why or why not? And if so, how do you make sure you have and show an “open door?” What are your thougths on the matter? Please do share them; they are very much wanted and creaved here!
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