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03/27/2003 Entry: "A thought about judgement"

I've been thinking about the "story sharing" that happened in the Chaplaincy yesterday. I keep coming back to one of them -- it's been nagging at me, you might say.One of the participants spoke of first arriving at university and deliberately seeking out the company of Christians not because he was a Christian himself, but because he knew the Christians would welcome and accept him. He's become a Christian since, but what impresses me about the story is the expectation that Christians would be willing to include someone who found it difficult to "fit in". The inclusion. the welcome, came before a personal profession of faith. It raises a question within me: Is God less welcoming than his church?

I don't know what this does to my theology of judgement, about which the warnings of scripture are stark and uncompromising. But I am certain that any step we take toward God, however faltering, hesitant and ill-motivated will be met with the overwhelming generosity of a father always glad to welcome home his children.