Where We Find Comfort

Earlier this morning I found out some bad news. My old youth leader called me and told me that one of my friends that I have grown up with had passed away from a car wreck. John Holt was his name. I have only seen him once in about the last five years, so the fact that he has died has not set in for me yet. I am going to try and go to the funeral, hopefully I will be able to go, but I have to preach this weekend and I do not know if I will be able to go.

This sermon I am preaching is my first sermon here at the this Church in Pensacola and is the first sermon I will ever really preach in church. I have preached before in my class at Seminary, but this I know will be a whole new experience for me. The text is on Mt. 10:40-42 about welcoming each other. I wrote this sermon out yesterday and it was on how we forget to welcome. And I was going to make some changes this morning. Then I found out the news about John and I didn't think I could write about it anymore. I started working on the sermon, and soon I found myself writing a whole different sermon, and I was in a whole different mood. I soon realized that welcoming is not just a hard thing to do, but a very important thing to do. When we welcome some one we are helping someone into a new situation or helping them cope with a transition in their life. If find myself seeing the act of welcoming not just as a loving act, but the act of welcoming as an act of comfort. I started thinking about all the times I have felt lost, confused, or in a time of transition, and where did I find God's comfort. I found God's comfort in the act of others welcoming and loving me.

So while I was writing this sermon, and thinking about welcoming as an act of comfort and love I decided to call my friends who had all known John. I called and told them that I was there if they wanted to talk about this, and that it was great to have them around in this situation. The act of welcoming brought comfort to me, and hope it did for them.

I think we forget way too much about the power of welcoming others. It is easy to do in the church setting, but what about the times where God might be or seem the furthest from our minds. Through the act of welcoming we are able to find God's presence in this world. We are able to experience God through each other in this act that people have been practicing for centuries. Welcoming someone into the situations and parts of your life might be the most comforting thing that people will be able to find, and it might be the way that they experience the presence of God that may have seemed lost.