Hospitality, the real thing, can be a blast: joyful, freeing, and hilarious. But it can also be a sometimes painful sacrifice: of private space, of our priorities, of our food budget and schedules. Today we’re embracing both sides. The joy of hosting guests, and the pain of some stranger’s socks in the washing machine. Open your hands, open your doors, open your home.
“If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself,’ you are doing right. But if you show favouritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.” (James 2:8–9 NIV)
After just over a year, we call London home. We’re not sure when the switch of calling Indiana home and now referring to London as home happened, but it did. It’s not an easy switch of reference to the place you call home when you move across an ocean to a new city. How does it become home?
It became home with opening our doors. When it seemed so easy to say no to an opportunity to hang out, when you’d rather not have the effort of trying, when you just miss the comfortable relationships you had… we forced ourselves to say yes. Yes, we’ll meet up with you for a picnic. Yes, we will attempt to meet in that part of the city (even if we get lost on the way). Yes, you can come over, we’re in pyjamas still, but come over. Yes, our home is open to dinners, lunches, breakfast, and tea. It is a yes to kids running in and out and neighbours stopping by to ask a question.
Through saying yes, it has become home. We still say no occasionally as we need devoted family time or just need to rest, but our yeses have been more than the nos. Looking back, we see how saying those yeses has not only caused this new city to become home, but has created a safe place for people to enter.
We saw a doormat the other day that said ‘Come as You Are’ and I’m now saving up to get it. This is what this year has taught us. Whether it’s someone from church, a neighbour or a new friend we’ve made from the school, we want everyone to know they can just come as they are and our home will be welcoming. It has opened up beautiful conversations, times of laughter that hurts your stomach and comforting hugs as tears flowed.
The overwhelming, unconditional love we know of Jesus in our lives is what we hope to show others as they enter our home. We hope they leave knowing there is something different about us, our home and the meaning behind how we do life. We pray that eventually they ask questions as God prompts them and prompts us to share our faith.
CHALLENGES:
Green: Inventory. Review your living space to see what you can do to make it more hospitable – is it welcoming?
Yellow: Invite. Grab a coffee. Share your lunch. Have people over tonight. If you have plans you can cancel this evening, do, and see what you can throw together to practise hospitality at short notice.
Red: Invest. Post on Facebook that you’ll regularly open your doors one day every month/week, and cook a meal for whoever RSVPs.
Contributed by Maya Laurent - Maya and her family live in London as missionaries serving a local church community. She’s passionate about empowering women of all ages to see their beauty and know they’re a masterpiece God created.