Companionship

Companionship

Enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts.

MY FRIEND SUE grew up in a household that had company dinners on Sundays. After church was over, her mom would hustle the children out to the car in order to prepare their home for the individual or family she’d just invited over for lunch. While the visitor offered to help get the meal ready and Sue and her siblings placed the pink rose china on the table, her dad would set up their Ping-Pong table in the hope of drawing someone into a friendly game afterward. Extending invitations to newcomers was ingrained, and the companionship provided by the friendships they began during Sunday dinners was a source of warmth and community.

Years later, when Sue moved to a new area, she wondered why other people didn’t seem as keen to offer Sunday dinner invitations the way her family had when she was growing up. Standing in the parking lot after church while everyone else drove away, she would think, Why didn’t anyone invite me over for lunch? Alone and in an unfamiliar place, a Sunday dinner would have gone a long way toward helping ease the loneliness she felt. Eventually, she stopped waiting and started inviting others over on her own, leading to a rich community of friends that provided the same loving companionship of her youth.

The early church provides a great blueprint for inviting others to share our faith and our food. Acts 2 describes how “believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (verse 42) and to prayer, but also to sharing in meals “with great joy and generosity” (verse 46). In this case, the philosophical tenets of our faith—sharing love and grace—have very practical applications. We can say we believe in God’s love, but doing the work of living out that love in our community can feel daunting. Our lives feel too busy, our houses too messy, or our meals too simple—yet none of those reasons excuses us from the mandate to love our neighbors as we do ourselves. When we share our meals, we share our lives. And when we choose to extend a hand or an invitation in genuine friendship, we’ll often find that the joy of companionship outweighs those other considerations.

Lord, thank you for the companionship we can have with one another. Help us to look for opportunities to invite others to experience the blessing of friendship. Amen.

-Kristin

One Good Step: Invite someone in need of companionship to share a meal with you.