AMY SANTARELLI |GUEST
It was a Saturday, and I was tired and not feeling up to my to-do list. In a more energetic moment earlier in the week, my husband and I had invited some people to come over for lunch after church on Sunday. But suddenly it was the day before and I was second-guessing our decision because now I needed to go to the store, make food, and clean. I just wanted to take a nap and do whatever I liked.
“What were we thinking?” I asked him, as I lugged out the vacuum.
Flash forward to Sunday evening, the guests just left, and we plopped down on the couch, happy smiles on our faces. Did we regret scheduling them to come over? Not one bit. Whatever work we went through was worth it for the connection we felt and the joy of serving others, knowing we were helping them feel part of a family. We were already planning who we would invite next as we discovered joy in obeying I Peter 4:9: “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” Okay, well, I still needed to do some internal work on the Saturday afternoon grumbling part!
Don’t Wait Until You Feel Like It
Most of us acknowledge that hospitality is a wonderful thing. We desire to do it. But if we wait until it’s convenient or feel like doing it, we probably never will. That’s why there was a time when my husband and I decided to invite people over every other Sunday. If we put it on the calendar and invited people, we couldn’t back out. Doing it every week wasn’t realistic because we didn’t want to burn out. But twice a month? That was doable. It was exciting to think that over the course of a year, we would probably have people in our home at least twenty times!
Sometimes we hosted several people groups at once as we sought to include singles and older couples along with families. We relished the number of people in our church family that we would know better than we ever could with short conversations or saying “Hi!” on Sunday morning. That kind of fellowship is nice but eating together and digging deeper into each other’s lives takes more than a few minutes, once a week.
We enjoyed making lists of who we wanted to invite and what food we could make for them. Sometimes we chose people we hardly knew; other times we invited dear friends we served alongside but rarely had opportunity for just hanging out together. But the biggest joy was seeing the results: a quiet person who hardly spoke, smiling at me and chatting away the next Sunday; children coming up and sharing something because now they knew me; looking around the sanctuary and realizing how many connections had been made over our scratched-up kitchen table.
God Will Provide
Showing hospitality isn’t supposed to be something we only do in certain stages of life, when our schedule lightens up, or when we have the house we think we need for it. It should be part of our lives as believers. Romans 12:13 is a well-known verse on the subject. If we look at its context, we can see it’s part of a longer passage which describes the marks of a true believer.
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
The punchline of hospitality follows a lovely list of good things God calls us to do. But before we think that doing hospitality is one more burden to bear, one more area where we fall short, let’s remember—if God desires us to do something, He will be faithful to provide what we need to do it. What are your reservations regarding opening your home to others or scheduling a coffee date? If you wrote those hesitations down, could you justify them with Scripture? How do the attributes and promises of God play into them? Are you willing to step out in faith and do the next thing, waiting expectantly for God to be faithful?
Just Do It!
It’s been several years since my husband and I made that commitment to schedule hospitality. I don’t remember what happened, but we fell out of the practice, and it’s been far too long. We’ve made the decision to start again, and I am feeling excited. We now have our first date on the calendar—want to join me in scheduling hospitality?
Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash
