You: A Xenial God? What does ‘xenial’ mean in the first place?
Me: The dictionary says ‘xenial’ means- hospitable, especially to strangers and foreigners.
You: A hospitable God? Doesn’t make sense.
Me: Doesn’t hospitable mean ‘making people feel welcome and at home’? I’m glad to say that the God I have come to know is one that makes me feel ‘at home’.
Yes, there were times I was truly lost in the woods, having made several bad choices and not knowing where to head – guilt, shame and a sense of despair is what I felt. That’s until I surrendered these feelings to God in faith, and became open and receptive to abundance. That is truly when I began to feel ‘at home’ – to know my place in the world and start to ‘be myself’.
Home is a place to become yourself. It’s somewhere you can close a door and open your heart. ~ Theo Pelletier
In order to explain how I truly felt, let me share with you a scene from the movie Blood Diamond . A young boy, Dia is captured by the rebels controlling the diamond mines and turned into a child soldier. He considers his own father to be a traitor and turns his gun on the man helping his father to reunite them. Watch how the scene plays out:
These are the father’s words to his son, Dia:
Dia. What are you doing?! Dia!! Look at me. Look at me!! What are you doing? (Walking towards his son very carefully…) You are Dia Vandy of the Proumanday Tribe. You are a good boy. You love soccer, and school. Your mother loves you so much. She waits by the fire making plantains and red stew. And the new baby…. The cows wait for you, and Bakwu, the wild dog who minds no one but you. Mmm? I know they made you do bad things. You are not a bad boy. I am your father, who loves you. And you will come home with me and be my son…again. (Dia lowers the gun and then they embrace.)
For some reason this scene makes me recall the parable of the prodigal son or rather the Father who runs to greet and welcome back his prodigal son.
While he (the son) was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. ~ Luke 15:20 ;
Coming home to God and to ourselves is indeed the best kind of homecoming, ever!
This post is written for the letter’X’ for the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge 2014.
Wow. I love this post and never heard of the word before. Sad that in school we are taught the word xenophobe, which means fear of or hatred for strangers, foreigners, those unlike ourselves. Wouldn’t the world be a much kinder place if we knew word like xenial even existed? Thank you for enlightening me. I’ll be sure to pass it on!
Strahlen recently posted..Late For Mass, But Lookin’ Good!
Coming home to God/ourselves – there’s so much peace thinking about that. Many of us strive all our lives to inch closer, both to ourselves and to God. But the moment of peace is when we wake up and realize it.
Lovely post. God, in my view is always Xenial!
Vidya Sury recently posted..Growing Up Moving On
Beautiful post, Corinne! I love this line, “That’s until I surrendered these feelings to God in faith, and became open and receptive to abundance.” There is joy in this post, knowing that God is available to us now and always. Thank you!
Cathy Taughinbaugh recently posted..Remembering My Mom This Mother’s Day
Wow so many dimensions to this beautiful post Corinne!! Completely true, when your at peace with yourself and feel completely at home that is when you feel that connection with the One! Loves how you weaved in the movie Blood Diamond here! I love this movie!
Aditi recently posted..The Tangerine Dream
Corinne , this is the first time I have heard the word xenial. I firmly believe that God is there for us. He is a protector and is always available for us. A divine post, very inspiring.
Thank you for this post. God bless you abundantly. I was looking for X to describe Gods Attributes to praise Him. Learnt the word Xenial but didnt know how to construct it in a sentence but this post helped me. I know of this movie, the connection you made to The Prodigal story is just awesome. Thank you.
Glad you found it useful.