Welcome

Welcome

When I was a little girl, welcome was always certain at my Aunt Billie’s house, where I was met with open arms from the moment my feet touched her driveway. She didn’t have to say she was delighted to see me, because everything about her said welcome.

Later, in high school, welcome was just a few steps across our suburban street at a kind neighbor’s house. Many afternoons I knocked on her door and was welcomed inside. She made two glasses of iced tea, and we sat and talked about anything that crossed my mind as worthy of conversation. She welcomed me.

Welcome is a powerful thing.

At the end of a year that left me bone tired and empty, I planned for a few days away, alone. I chose places where I believed welcome would await me. For three days, I retreated to a favorite spot in the Texas Hill Country: a cabin on a bluff near the Frio River where I’ve spent many precious hours in the past.

It was God’s welcome I felt as my feet walked the cool stone floor and the canyon’s rocky trails; it was his embrace that gathered me as I napped in the window seat with the windows open wide and rocked in the hammock before sunset. In the dark, the light, the silence, and the solitude, I was welcomed. I was not alone.

On the way home, I stopped for a final day of rest in a place I’d never been: a hotel housed in an old riverside brewery. Everyone I encountered was kind. Everywhere I looked I saw beauty. When the restaurant hostess asked if I was alone, I said yes. I told her I’d decided to treat myself to a birthday splurge en route to my Houston home. “New Year’s Eve is your birthday?” she asked. I nodded yes.

A few minutes later, my smiling waiter appeared with a small treat I didn’t order. “Happy birthday,” he said with a wink. When strangers (not relatives or neighbors) are kind—it’s easier to see the true origin of that kindness. When you travel alone and are welcomed with love, you understand better whose love surrounds you everywhere you go.

“I will welcome you. And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” says the Lord Almighty.

2 Corinthians 6:17-18, NASB