Welcome Aboard

WELCOME ABOARD!

These are the words a little boy said to Robin and me, seemingly out of the blue. We had just boarded the plane were already seated, in our own pre-takeoff, get-ready-for-a-three-hour-flight mode. As this boy and his mom were walking on the plane, he stopped at our row and welcomed us.

Just us.

Without missing a beat, he looked up at his mom for approval and smiled. I don’t know if he’d been told to be nice or this was just his normal approach to being around strangers. The not-so-surprised look on his mom’s face hinted that this was not the first time her little boy had done such a thing.

Perhaps there was more to his story. Perhaps he was learning how to navigate a big world full of strangers. Or perhaps he didn’t even realize yet how wonderfully different that moment was.

All I know is how it left me.

It’s hard to explain how shocking it was.  It was as if God spoke to my heart through that little boy.

I had just been welcomed aboard.

That simple greeting got me thinking…How many times could I be the person who enters a room with a different attitude? How many times could my words and actions be wonderfully different?

To fill the air with soft words?

To gently surprise another with a kind gesture?

To turn the volume of this world down just a notch?

To welcome someone?

The honest answer is that it could happen all the time. Every day. This should be the rhythm of my life.

You see, next time it could be me that welcomes someone new and it could be me that turns to sense the nodding approval of my Heavenly Father who saw it all.  But the truth is, that isn’t always my first reaction. Not nearly enough, not yet.

And thanks to those two words, I now had the rest of the flight to think and pray about that.