Come Back and Knock Tomorrow
Jordan St. Cyr on keeping his family’s front door open to the kids who need it most
Why an open door matters most
What if the truest measure of your faith is who you let in?
Singer-songwriter Jordan St. Cyr sees the pull of the culture around him clearly. “In a day and age where it’s okay to be so self-centered, it’s okay to post on social media the best parts of yourself and show the world, this is who I am,” he says. “In a day and age where it’s okay to consume as much as you want.”
Against that current, his family holds to something different. “Something that we hold true in our family is that we are not the center of our life,” Jordan says. “If we are truly going to follow Jesus, and we’re going to truly follow the way, we have to follow in the steps that Christ walked before us.”
For Jordan, that conviction has a specific pattern. “At the end of the day, [Jesus] did the work. He spoke the truth. He rested when He needed to. He sacrificed. He took His life out of the equation and laid it down,” he says. “So, something we talk about in our family a lot is, it’s just people first. God’s already at the center of this.”
People First
Jordan traces that conviction straight to scripture. “One way that we show God that He is first is kind of acting out that verse in Matthew 22, where it says, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul’ (paraphrased Matthew 22:37). Jesus says, this is My greatest commandment. And the next is like it—love your neighbor as yourself” (paraphrased Matthew 22:38-39).
He and his wife return to that pairing constantly in the daily friction of raising a family. “Whenever there’s some spats in the family between the kids, or even as me and my wife are determining our goals and how we want our year to look, we’re always reminded: How are we serving those around us? How are we reaching out to the community? How are we caring for the kids in our community that aren’t necessarily the easiest to be around? I believe we have a responsibility as believers to draw them in.”
Come Back and Knock Tomorrow
That responsibility has a face to it—literally, knocking on the St. Cyrs’ front door. “We’ve had a couple kids that come over, and they’re a little rough around the edges,” Jordan says. “They say words that they probably shouldn’t be saying. And we bring them in, and they play with our kids.”
When something inappropriate happens, Jordan and his wife handle it while keeping the door open: “We just say, hey, thank you guys for coming today. We’re going to call it for today. Please come and knock on the door tomorrow. I think that’s just a great way that we can serve our community and walk it out.”
The welcome outlasts the correction. The door stays open.
Jordan believes this is bigger than one family’s approach to hospitality. “I think this is at the core of our calling, no matter who you are,” he says. “This is how we love God. We love God by loving His kids so well.”
Maybe you’ve felt the pull to keep your world tidy—to let people in only when it’s convenient, only after they’ve cleaned up first. Let Jordan’s story encourage you to picture something more: a door that stays open even after a hard day, because the people God places in front of you are never an interruption to your calling. They are the calling.
You cannot out-give God. Every time you choose to show up—for the neighbor, the rough-around-the-edges kid, the person who tests your patience—you’re stepping into the very thing Christ modeled: a life poured out, and somehow always full.
Want to go deeper?
A Life That Speaks: Serving Others with the Story You Live—a free 5-day devotional on YouVersion—walks you through five scripture images (a lamp, salt, a mustard seed, an alabaster jar, a harvest field) to help you see that the ordinary, faithful things you give are seeds God is already tending toward a harvest.
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