Hebrews 13:1-2 - Dinner Tonight?

MEMORY VERSE:

“Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters.  Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it!”  Hebrews 13:1-2 (NLT)

Sitting in church this weekend I couldn’t deny thoughts of discontent cavorting about in my mind.  We started “church shopping” a year and a half ago.  We’ve been attending this church for just under a year and haven’t made any connections. 

As we sat there I couldn’t help thinking maybe we’d chosen the wrong church.  I turned to my husband and said cynically, “If we’d stayed at that Baptist church we went to a couple of times we’d probably know people by now and be involved in ministries.”  Were we in the wrong place?

To be fair to the church, I’m probably not in the best frame of mind this weekend.  I’ve been travelling off and on for the past five weeks for work and am exhausted.  In fact before church my husband came upstairs to find me curled up on the couch, pillow under my head, eyes closed, wishfully thinking about a nap!

Last weekend I’d spoken at a retreat with a group of women from Southwood United, the church I attended when I lived in Calgary.  The weekend focused on finding freedom through forgiveness and as I opened up and shared some of my experiences with the group the sense of love and acceptance was overwhelming.  I realized how much I missed the presence of these women in my life.

A couple of weekends before, my husband and I were in Calgary for the weekend as I was speaking at Southwood and the sense that this was our church family was too strong to deny.

So perhaps I brought just a little bit of negativity with me this weekend when we returned to the church we’ve been attending since moving to Stony Plain.  I was frustrated...I wanted to be involved, I wanted to be connected, and I wanted to serve in the ministry of the church.

I chose this passage of scripture for the memory verse this week because it reminds me I have a responsibility to reach out to those in the church and work on making those connections myself.  I can’t just blame the church for the fact that we’re not “plugged in”.

Reaching out to people is not something that comes naturally for me.  I’d rather speak to a group of two or three hundred strangers than talk one-on-one with someone I’ve never met.

But this verse reminds me that God wants us to reach out to people in our church and in our community to get to know them.  We need to get past the shallow, “How is the weather today” conversation and get to know people on a more personal basis.

Inviting people into your home to share a meal is a great way to start.  Sharing food helps to “break the ice” and conversation flows. 

The food doesn’t have to be fancy.  In fact I recall a failed dessert whose base would have made a better Frisbee than a food source, but we salvaged the topping by scraping it off and “eco-binned” the concrete base.  Don’t think that wasn’t a conversation starter!

So this serves as a reminder to me...in order to meet people and be connected in the church I have to invest time and energy in reaching out and making those connections. 

Would you like to meet more people, make new friends, and have deeper connections?  Have you tried inviting people into your home?  Share your thoughts by clicking on “comments” below.

“Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters.  Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it!”  Hebrews 13:1-2 (NLT)