to be or not to be...friendly

I've thought of a bajillion things to write about these past few days, but haven't been able to because we couldn't connect. Turns out our utility room door wore a hole in the cable, thus no access to the rest of the world for a few days. I'm so dependent on email and the internet nowadays. Don't know what I'd do without the World Wide Web.

Anyways, one of our elders stood up in church this past Sunday and said he'd received a letter that morning from a person who had visited our congregation four times and never been spoken to by anyone. The elder went on to say that he had had a similar experience when he first visited our church. He and his family went elsewhere, and then eventually ended up at our "unfriendly" congregation. Ouch. I hardly think one letter of complaint deems us "unfriendly", but I also know we have a responsibility to be a welcoming group. I don't think it is many folks' intent to be unfriendly. This is just one of the dilemmas of larger churches!

Okay. Enough about that. But keeping on the topic of friendliness, I went for a cup of joe the other day and tried to practice a random act of kindness only to be DENIED. The college-age gal in front of me was trying to use her credit card to pay her bill of $2.98. The card machine was temporarily kaput, so the cashier asked if she had any hard cold moolah. I heard her say she only had two dollars, so being the kind-hearted soul that I am, I offered her one of my George Washingtons. She glanced over her shoulder at me, then proceeded to dig up some coins out of her purse. She left with nary a "thank you" or a smile in my direction. It hurt my feelings. I wanted to cry. Seriously I did. Oh well. I can always count on Brandon to cheer me up. My upbeat, positive-thinking husband said, "Well...at least you got to keep your dollar!"