When I arrived at Pineridge Fellowship Chapel in 2020 to pastor, the church was already warm and friendly. My family and I instantly felt welcomed, which was important given all that was going on in 2020. It is easy to become complacent as a congregation. Sometimes when you have a smaller church, new people can almost be treated like outsiders, particularly if they’re different from the church.

FOMO. I keep hearing that word, which stands for fear of missing out. It reminds me of another word loneliness. As Sheldon and I work in our member care role, people often tell us how lonely they are and how much they long for deeper friendships. I think FOMO and loneliness are pretty common. To be honest, I have struggled with them too.

Let me introduce you to my new home. It’s a city where roses bloom in the winter and some trees stay green all year.

God, in Christ, knows the experience of the refugee. “An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay here until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.’ So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’” (Matthew 2:13–15).

As we continue to search for ways to meet our deep longings for communion with God and others, let’s consider how the practice of hospitality might be just the thing we need as we ride out this pandemic.