Every Friday, Lisa Jo Baker hosts a blog link up called Five Minute Fridays. She provides a word prompt and then participants are to set their timers for five minutes and write until the timer goes off. The word for today is WELCOME. Happy Friday Divas and here goes:
WELCOME is how you feel when you arrive. It is also something that you say automatically when some one says “thank you”. When used after “thank you” the word WELCOME some how loses its zeal. Perhaps that is why when you finish your transaction at Chick Fil A, the clerk says “My Pleasure”.
Although the word WELCOME can seem common place when robotically stated after someone says thank you, there is NOTHING common place about arriving somewhere and feeling left out. Although it has been many years since middle school, the old feeling of everyone already knows everybody and no one talked to me still hurts…as much as we would like to say that it does not.
God designed us to live in community with others. Could that be why it feels so good when people WELCOME us? One of the repeated compliments that people give our class is that they felt WELCOMED when they arrived. WOW. Divas, I must take my hat off to you because I cannot possibly WELCOME all of our new people. You guys clap and cheer when someone raises their hand to say that they are new. You guys share your toning sticks and hip scarves with the new ladies.
I suspect when you were new, someone WELCOMED you and so you are paying it forward. How ah-mazing is that?
It is so tempting to go about our day and only talk with our group of friends when we are at church, work, volunteer meetings, or when doing things for the kids at school. Remember the word WELCOME. Make it your business or like Chick Fil A, let it be your pleasure to help people feel as though they belong.
Often a genuine smile, eye contact and a hello go a LONG way! You may be the only Jesus someone sees.
When we make some one feel WELCOMED, they feel love.
God is love.
We WELCOME you to join us for Bible Study and Class on Saturday October 6, 2012! We are currently studying Unglued by Lysa Terkeurst.
You have captured so well the power of welcome. Good job! I want to be a Dance Fit Diva after reading this! Thanks for sharing.
Having been in our class since day one, I have to say that you, Katina, must have set the tone for the way we welcome our new ladies! Thanks for setting the example!
Awesome! Wish I join in for a move or two. 😉
You so hit the nail on the head with this one! I especially love the “My Pleasure” part… as that is what I will try to start saying from now on when told “thank you”! It’s much more genuine than “welcome” in that respect! Being “welcomed” in a new place is key as well! Having been “welcomed” with OPEN ARMS on my first visit with you and the Divas is what made me return! I can say, I have been that girl that was not welcomed in new places and it is a lonely feeling… It is a feeling I wish for no one to experience under my conscious eye… I say conscious eye because there may be instances where I am not aware or tuned in to someone new in a place where I am already comfortable. In closing, “welcome” touches the soul in a new place, with new people, and in new situations and the two simple words “my pleasure” touch the soul so deeply when followed by the two simple words of “thank you.”