I have been to about 10 conferences since I started working for Apologia (most of them last year). I have set up hundreds of books, described notebooking journals again and again, and downed gallons of coffee. It wasn’t until this weekend that I have been invited to someone’s home (multiple homes, actually). I don’t begrudge any past conference planners or the locals for not extending invitations; we were there on business, had hotel rooms and meals - we obviously were not in want. It just struck me how beautiful hospitality can be.
Hospitality, it seems, is not just opening up your house; hotels and restaurants do this and we don’t think them more virtuous for doing so. Hospitality is opening up the home, where you live and what’s close to you; in a sense, it’s opening up yourself to others. But it’s not self-disclosure or being friendly (if it were, we wouldn’t have much use for the word ‘hospitality’); it’s something more, it’s inviting someone to be with you in an atmosphere warm and comfortable because you’ve lived there.
Hospitality is an invitation into your peace. Think about it for a moment, if you go over to a home with subtle or overt tension between children and parents (or husband and wife), there’s no place for you to sit, and the dog keeps growling at you - do you walk away from this experience thinking you’ve just tasted premier hospitality? Doubtful; we know it’s something better than that. Hospitality is a warmth which welcomes YOU, this points to another one of its aspects, attentiveness.
All of the great hosts I’ve ever had always took especially good care of me. They welcomed me, fed me, talked with me, and made sure I was never inconvenienced. I got a good seat, a full glass, a thick slice of cake, and God was thanked because I had come over. I was receiving special honor as the guest and I sure knew it. I remember being in a homeschooling house a few years ago and seeing one of the most beautiful moments of parenting as the mom called her girls into a schoolroom and talked to them about how to be gracious to guests. I don’t recall her specific instructions, but the theme was inescapable: hospitality is about serving and giving. Though this sums up more than just hospitality, one cannot be hospitable without it.
Eugene Peterson talks about giving as he recalls seeing a pair of adult birds feeding their chicks for hours. At one point, they decided mealtime had ended and it was time to fly. One by one the little birds were muscled off the limb, left hurtling to the ground until, in some frantic, mid-air epiphany, they began flapping their wings and stopped their crash. He writes, “Some of us try desperately to hold on to ourselves, to live for ourselves. We look so bedraggled and pathetic doing it, hanging on to the dead branch . . . for dear life, afraid to risk ourselves on the untried wings of giving. We don’t think we can live generously because we have never tried. But the sooner we start the better, for we are going to have to give up our lives finally, and the longer we wait the less time we have for the soaring.”
We had dinner one night with the family who planned the conference. Before we left, the hostess made sure we understood that her door and family were as open to us as if they were our own. We had no need for loneliness; family was close. It is in this aspect, the availability of an inviting family, that allows us to be hospitable people, regardless of whether we are home, working a conference booth, getting mail from the mailbox, or anywhere we go. More than anything else, it is a perspective which asks, “How can I serve you, give to you, so that you know you are welcome? How can I do good by you? How can I share the peace I have with you, so that you are blessed?” If home is where the heart is, then the quality of the home comes from the health and attitude of the heart. When people meet you and talk with you today, will they know that you count it an honor to have gotten to spend some time with them? Will they feel welcomed into your day, your life? They should.
Read these Scriptures (John 14:1-4; Phil. 2:1-5; Heb. 12:1-2). Then, in your journal, articulate a Bible-based view of hospitality. Then answer the question, “Do I do this?”
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