The Airport Gate That Became a Church

In December 2022, a massive winter storm stranded over four thousand travelers at Denver International Airport for three days. Strangers who would never have spoken became a makeshift community. A retired nurse from Topeka named Margaret Chen started checking on elderly passengers. A college student named David Okafor shared his phone charger with a mother trying to video-call her kids. A businessman gave up his first-class lounge pass so a family with a crying infant could rest somewhere quiet. By the second night, a group at Gate B31 had organized shared meals from vending machines and leftover restaurant food. They exchanged phone numbers. They prayed together — Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, people who hadn't been to church in years — all holding hands near the baggage carousel.

When the runways finally cleared, something remarkable happened. People wept saying goodbye. They had arrived as strangers and were leaving as something closer to family.

Paul's closing words to the Corinthians carry this same ache and hope. "Agree with one another, live in peace," he urges a fractured church. Then he offers the benediction that has echoed through every tradition for two thousand years: the grace of Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. That trinitarian blessing is not decorative language. It is the very power that turns strangers at a gate into brothers and sisters at a table — the same power available to every congregation willing to greet one another not with suspicion, but with holy love.