Try to remember a time, place, or circumstance in which you felt uncommonly welcomed. You were accepted as is, without pretense. It was so comfortable a situation that you didn't want to exit it. The very thought that you would experience it again sometime gave you the motivation to face most every day.
I know I wasn't the kind of husband my in-laws had in mind for their daughter. They had lived all their lives in rural north-central Missouri. I came from the city. I imagine they hoped for some nice local boy to marry her. I was from a totally different world. And yet, from the first time they met me, these gracious people went out of their way to welcome me. If their daughter loved me, that was enough for them. Their home was a warm, welcoming place; a place of relaxed acceptance and a deeply chosen love. Each time I went to their house it was like a trip to a homespun oasis or retreat. For over three decades that house and those people lift my spirits and warm my heart. My mother-in-law is with the Lord now, and we don't get to my father-in-law's home as much as we once did. Yet I still get a sense of an on-going unconditional embrace from my wife's dad and the lovely woman he married after my mother-in-law passed on.
I wish everyone could have some place and circumstance like that. I wish all followers of Jesus could connect with such a situation, and do everything they could to make their congregations the kind of gatherings that inspire that kind of embrace in those who are seeking God.
I'll see you around the next bend in the river.
Raking Leaves
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Fall is here. The sun is moving towards the edge of the frame where, in
just a few weeks it will hit the bumper rail and start back towards the
other side...
2 years ago
2 comments:
Geoff: What a beautiful tribute to your in-laws. Remind folks to tell their parents, etc. these thoughts while they have the opportunity.
When people do find that place at church or in some freindship, it often is jsut what they have been looking for. For me it has been many places, my grandmothers'yard and garden, the woods on my parents farm, places that usually have memories that exclude strife and conflict. Like you said, where people are gracious, and want to share, Many people have commented that coming to our church is like coming home, or feeling at home. This tells me that for them home was that place of comfort and unconditional love. I more and more believe that when Jesus directed the disciples to make more disciples and to teach them all they had learned, that really it was to love. That's it.
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