When I took my seven-year-old to see Pixar’s “Elio” in July, I expected an entertaining kids’ movie with space themes. Instead, I found a poignant reflection on loneliness and the desire to belong. What are religious communities doing to respond to that need?

To me, God’s love is so enormous, so all-encompassing, and all-embracing that God’s purpose is not only to bring humankind into the fullness of God’s embrace but that the whole world might once again be freed from the chains of its present condition. That’s a kind of God that is worth following and worshipping, a God that will stop at nothing to bring back to life those things now dead.

Each Friday in The Christian Citizen, we publish a Religion News Roundup with summaries of religion news stories and links for those who want to read more.

I invite you to choose one day in the near future, and light a candle of hope, a candle of kindness, and a candle of love in whatever setting you find yourself. May God’s peace be the flame to your private or public testimonies.

Which is more important for a church, belief or welcome? Perhaps that is like asking which wing of the airplane is more important. They are both important, but in some ways, they are the same thing, for the extravagant welcome into God’s loving embrace is a church’s theology.