Hospitality

I am currently reading A Life that Says Welcome by Karen Ehman, and I actually bought this book while yelling, "Help! I have no idea how to do this!"

This was brought on because of a verse that has convicted me for a while, and it just so happens to come right after my life verse. Here they are:

"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality." Romans 12:12-13.

Practice hospitality. How exactly do I do that? I pictured having a huge meal, with appetizers and nice music playing in the background, and having every inch of the house clean, all of the time. I always thought that entertaining and hospitality were the same thing. Since I was raised in a home where people hardly ever came over, you can imagine how the thought of having people come into our home overwhelms me. I was always the one going over to other friends' houses growing up, and when their parents would apologize for the mess, I would look around thinking, what mess?

The lesson that God taught Karen that she shared in her book is that there is a difference between "entertaining" and offering hospitality. As she says, "Entertaining puts the emphasis on you and how you can impress others. Offering hospitality puts the emphasis on others and strives to meet their physical and spiritual needs so that they feel refreshed, not impressed, when they leave your home."

Quite often, planning parties and preparing to have people in our home that aren't used to cat hair everywhere and bread crumbs on the counters sends me into a frantic cleaning spree. I feel like there are many times when I miss something that is out of place, and I notice it after people have already arrived.

So, you can imagine how relieved I felt when I read this particular quote in Karen's book:

...offering hospitality is much more about the condition of your heart than the condition of your home.

Everything doesn't have to be perfect. What matters more is how I embrace the people who enter my home. If I practice Biblical hospitality, when they leave my home they won't be thinking about the misplaced sock that was under the coffee table, or that there was a light bulb out in our ceiling light. What they will remember is the feeling of community, the feeling that someone has invested in them spiritually and emotionally, and they will be encouraged to share Christ's love with others.