Welcome Even the Suffering

"Welcome!" is a warm greeting... an immediate sense of coming home. We love to welcome what is good, but in this world God does not promise us that we will always have bright sunny days and an overflow of money in our accounts... we are not even promised to have a job or good health.

One thing we are promised is that in this life like Jesus Christ did we will suffer. How many of us can welcome that concept?

But we all knew it is true - sadly... hurt has touched us all whether we are a little child that has fallen and skinned his knees or a grown brave solider who just took at bullet for his Nation in a war. We know this place called earth is not really our home. We sense it every time we hold a dear friend who is at a loss in life or when we mess like we have messed up a relationship by words rashly spoken.

We pretend we have a welcoming place here - in our home, in our hearts and in our hope.

The truth of it is... we know deep inside... we hold our hope in the fact that when we take our last breathe here on earth, our next one will be really the one we having been waiting to welcome... all the days of our life.

Oh, Father God thank you for preparing for me a place that will in the end make sense of all the times I have had to welcome suffering into my life.

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This is my second time to participate in the Five Minutes Friday.

The word this week was WELCOME.

We each get five minutes to write on the topic, whatever comes out is to be uncensored and unedited. I hope you enjoy it.