We can all remember times when we found ourselves in a group of people we didn’t know, and we felt that uneasy feeling that they were all just staring at us. That’s not fun. Some people are very good at melting away the stranger stigma very quickly. But others seem to use that ‘stranger’ feeling to keep distance from others for their personal reasons. They even pull out the ‘stranger’ thing on their friends when they are unhappy with them. Every person in the world shares a need for warm inclusion. Listen to Jacob’s expression of this when he met his brother Esau, whom he’d wronged, for the first time in 20 years…
“Esau said, ‘let me at least lend you some of my men’. ‘There is no need’, said Jacob. ‘Your generous welcome is all I need or want’. So Esau set out that day and made his way back to Seir.” ~Gen. 32:22-24
This captures a very great and deep human need. We all long to see a welcoming expression and feel a warm acceptance from the people around us. Even if we know we don’t deserve it. There have been many studies on this topic in recent decades that reveal it’s impossible for a person to stay emotionally healthy by themselves. The technical term for this is ‘the limbic open-system’. In other words, every system in our body is self-reliant, except our emotional system. God hard-wired us that way at creation. It is what insures the continuance of society. What everyone around you deeply longs for is A GENEROUS WELCOME!…Over and over again. ~verlon
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