Hospitality

The gift of hospitality is in fact faceless.  It knows no boundaries if we allow our eyes to see from different lenses.  As I grow deeper into knowing Christ, I am convinced that we've missed the mark on welcoming the stranger.  Offering hospitality is a gift.  It's is the truest expression of Jesus I can identify.  It is more than tossing a coin in the direction of the lonely or homeless - it's breaking bread side by side.  It's taking the approach that my time and eye to eye listening is more valuable than my contribution.  Hospitality requires an effort that reaches beyond my comfort or hanging with my "peeps."   

It's listening with my whole self.  It's a gift of presence when it might be uncomfortable or inconvenient.  Forgive me when I take time only if I've planned for it or scheduled it.  God doesn't work on my lists of tasks or even within the context of my gifted ness - for he is the giver of all gifts, right?  

Hospitality is allowing LOVE, the face and presence of god himself, to make new creations out of the unplanned or spontaneous.  It's entertaining those who look and think and feel differently.  Those that seem outcast-able and maybe even deserving.  How can LOVE work through me if I'm constantly organizing and fitting Jesus into my parameters?  How can my categories of people make room for gods gentleness and love?  It can't.

Draw me nearer, nearer...to what? God?  A better sense of love in an unbroken world?  Hospitality is that...befriending, making time, sharing morning coffee or tea and sitting side by side as god works through and heals both us.  Yes we are the same as the stranger.  

Therefore, Let us draw near to the throne of Christ where creator sits and dwells among, me.   Yes his grace and mercies are new every morning and required for each of us to know god more. Let us break bread together....expecting god to sit among us.