Acceptance

When I was 12 years old, there was a lot of transition and turmoil in my life. My dad had just resigned from a church in Radford, VA and was completing a secular job; so my mom moved us(me and my brother and sister and grandmother) to Lakeland, FL. We were waiting for dad to come join us, and we were pretty poor. We lived in one of those long term motels on the outskirts of town(much like you see along the older parts of Route 1). We stayed there for a few months before moving back to Virginia when dad started pastoring a church in Woodbridge.

During the time that we were there, I was struggling with being accepted. The school I attended had kids who had the nicer clothes and lived in town and they knew I was an outsider. It was a tough time. Where we lived there was this ragged dog that we befriended and accepted into our home - he was tattered and looked like he had been abused and was not well taken care of. Each day, we would feed this dog and try to get him back into shape. I came to love this little creature that most people would have been disgusted with. In alot of ways I identified with this dog who had been rejected by others and it was with a sad heart the one day he stopped coming around and shortly after we moved away. It is not often that I think about that dog; but as I am preparing for Sunday he entered my memory. How many of us have rejected others much like that dog had been. How many of us maybe feel like that little dog - tattered and abused by others, rejected by men.

On Sunday, we are going to examine acceptance from a Biblical perspective. We will talk about how God loves and welcomes and calls us to love and welcome the beautiful and the rejected, even ourselves.


See you Sunday.

Pastor Rich