Welcome Home

Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.

Taking a deep breath to settle the butterflies in my stomach, I opened the car door. “Let’s go. Service starts soon.”

And with that, we stepped back inside a church we’d left ten years ago—trepidatious and hopeful, scared and excited, knowing there were so many people there whom we still loved and who still loved us, and wondering about all the rest.

Aaron and I had been on a journey during those in-between years—all of it God-ordained, all of it growth and good—and we don’t regret that time. But we’d been feeling the tug to return and had been running the other direction for a long while. Finally, we’d had an honest conversation over dinner with the pastor and his wife, asking if we might return, confessing our fear of rejection.

“Welcome home,” said Russ, a long-time board member who greeted us at the door to the church. His whispered words amid a bear hug broke the dam of tears I’d been holding back.

Inside, smiles, hugs, and words of welcome from so many others had me openly weeping during the songs. And when the pastor asked later about how the first time back had gone, my slightly choked up response was “It felt like coming home.”

Our home, short of heaven, is in community with others who love Jesus. There, we find unity in our love of God and others even as we celebrate our uniqueness. This doesn’t mean there is never conflict and misunderstanding. We are complicated, messy creatures, and being in community also means we’ll need to both forgive and apologize from time to time.

Creating community means that sometimes we are the ones providing a warm welcome—intentionally creating space for others to come into—and sometimes we are the ones who desperately need to be welcomed home with a hug and words that ease our anxiousness.

Julie

Today’s Act of Gratitude

Who around you needs a warm welcome into a community, whether as formal as a church body or as informal as a Saturday morning Bible study? Reach out to invite them in or remind them of how glad you are that they are there.