Practicing Hospitality

We have been on a school break since a week ago last Friday (yes, our school has a weird calendar-mainly having to do with getting the MKs in the dorm together with their parents more often). As many of you know, going from a school schedule to a week-long break back to school schedule can make for rough transitions...I had hoped this break would be more of a stay-at-home-get-rested-and-relaxed break, but somehow it morphed into a really irregular schedule and some late nights...not really bad, just different than what I'd hoped. I knew that we were all feeling tired, so I figured that after church on Sunday, we'd be able to rest and then get to bed early two nights in a row to be nice and rested up for when school resumes again tomorrow.

And then came the call to hospitality.

Late Sunday afternoon we got a ring from a pastor friend of Miguel's; he and his family were coming into town and could they come to our house? This is a couple that works up in the sierra planting churches...Miguel and the youth work team from our church spent a week with them up there last year. Miguel had given them our number and told them to call if they were ever in town and they were taking him up on his offer. To their credit, we found out that they had sent us a text message three days ago...oops, guess we missed it! Note to self-don't rely on text messages for communication. But I digress...

First reaction: slight panic. I have very little food in the house, will they want to spend the night? and are the bathrooms clean?! Oh my goodness, look at the floor-how long has it been since I mopped? ...we had a bit of a rough Sunday and we're tired...I am really not prepared for this!

Second reaction: ¡Tranquila! Relax! Everything will be fine! Guess that's my Latin side...

So when they got here, we offered them drinks and chatted for a while. Then we offered them supper, although Miguel and the pastor had to go to the store for groceries first. The pastor's wife and I stayed home and began preparing what food I could find in the house...lemonade, some broccoli, a couple of cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes for the "tortas" (sandwiches with bread similar to Kaiser rolls), and oh good-I had the ingredients for cornbread, well, everything minus the milk, but it turned out okay with just water (Note to self: Cooking for company is not really a good time to experiment with recipes).

When Miguel returned with the rest of the torta fixings, we had supper and then they said that they would, indeed, like to spend the night. So we rearranged the house a bit, shuffled some kids around (we also had another friend of Micah's spending the night, too), everyone had a place to sleep, and all was well. Miguel did have to run to the store again this morning for milk...definitely that laid-back Latin approach to life, just kind of taking things as they come. :)

I was thinking about all of this earlier today and decided to review what Scripture says about hospitality. I did a search on Biblegateway and the first verse that showed up was Romans 12:13, "Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality." I was curious about the context, so I expanded the view to show the entire chapter. Now I really should have recognized which chapter this was, but apparently my brain had taken a short vacation or something. I was somewhat surprised to scroll up to the beginning of the chapter and see that this verse appears in a chapter that begins with...

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship."

I'm not a theologian and maybe these two passages weren't really meant to "go together", and yet today it struck me that maybe they do! What jumped out to me this morning was: 1) share with those in need, 2) practice hospitality and 3) sacrifice.

I don't think I normally view hospitality as being a sacrifice...but is that because I usually maintain control of when and how I practice it? It's when the unexpected company shows up that my true attitude towards hospitality gets tested! I'm happy to say that I had a good attitude about it this time, but unfortunately it hasn't always been the case...

I think that I have somewhat lost the true essence of hospitality. I think maybe I often view hospitality as something to give when I feel I have it to give...to be done when/if the conditions are optimal...when it's convenient for me...when it fits into my schedule...when no other activities are planned so my full attention can be focused solely on our guests (and when does that ever happen?!)...when I have something special to offer. It can become an "all or nothing" situation-either it's done to "perfection" or not at all.

No, the conditions weren't exactly "optimal" for having company this weekend (far from it, actually). No, it didn't really "fit" into our schedule. No, the house wasn't in great shape (among other things, there is actually a big chunk of ABC gum stuck to the floor in the bathroom behind the toilet-I just didn't have the time to deal with it!)...I simply had to overlook a lot of the cleaning "details". Yes, we stayed up too late. Yes, we spent money on the extra groceries during a tight month for us. Yes, the kids are going to be tired tomorrow (I did manage to get them in bed early tonight). Yes, it "messed up" our schedule.

And yet I think we practiced hospitality. I'm so glad we did.