Wedding Guests

Wedding Guests

Accept each other just as Christ has accepted you so that God will be given glory.

The summer before I entered fourth grade, my family moved from Grand Rapids, Minnesota, a forest-filled area with the shimmering waters of the Mississippi River winding through town, to the grassier farmlands of central Minnesota.

When we moved, we left behind my aunt, uncle, and cousins, as well as various friends. One year, we made one of our many trips northward to attend the wedding of the son of a family friend. Still a teenager living at home, I tagged along, curious to see if I would run into any old friends.

That day, while cooling my heels in a Lutheran church on the edge of town, I spied the teenage versions of kids from our old church whom I’d last seen at age nine. Despite my shyness, they quickly made me feel at ease and even offered to take me along with them around town. Having gained my parents’ permission, we spent the next several hours driving around my old hometown, visiting places that had grown murky in my memory. With a keen eye, I saw the new library built in part through the largesse of the paper mill, the businesses downtown that had failed or thrived in my absence, and the old church building I once attended that felt smaller than it used to. By the time they returned me to the wedding and my parents, I was grateful for their kindness and the opportunity they’d afforded me to see my old town through their eyes.

Friendship isn’t just about established friends—the ones we have now, the ones we feel the strongest pull toward—it’s also about our willingness to keep our circle open. There is a generosity in including others and accepting them the same way that Jesus has accepted us—viewing others not as strangers, but rather as long-lost friends to rediscover. Though the old friends’ offer to include me in their plans may have started as a polite overture, their willingness to include me gave me a chance to feel at home, even in a town I no longer claimed as my own.

— Kristin

— Today’s Act of Friendship —

Go out of your way to include a new acquaintance or old friend.