Everybody, Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People

Chapters 15 through 18 use different types of mission outreach as springboards for the lessons Goff shares: welcoming immigrants, benevolence to inmates, ministering to other Christians, and feeding the needy. Walter, the individual for whom Chapter 15 is titled, is a war refugee who has found purpose in making new immigrants who come to the United States with nothing feel welcome. He allowed Goff to accompany him to an airport on one occasion to welcome an incoming group. Goff asserts that the greeting Walter gives refugees is akin to the greeting we will receive when we get to heaven (141-42). He writes that we will get to meet Jesus and the experience “will involve a tremendous unlearning of many of the things we thought we were certain of” (142). According to Goff, Jesus was referring to us when he described the separation of the sheep and the goats (143). He expresses that Walter recognizes Jesus in every needy person he meets because Walter is becoming love (145). Goff says everyone belongs to the group of people whom we are called to love as if they are Jesus (146). He concludes the chapter with a list of imperatives intended to fulfill Jesus’s command: Welcome strangers, give water to the thirsty, visit sick people in the hospital.