Risky Hospitality

Hospitality isn’t just about setting out a nice table or offering someone a comfortable chair or holding the door open for someone. It’s about opening your life—your time, your resources, your heart—to another person and being blessed in the process. It’s about making room for others, seeing them as a guest of God. It’s about treating the stranger not with suspicion, but as if they might be an angel in disguise. That’s a radical, risky kind of hospitality—the kind that Jesus calls us to. - Father Eric Mancil

A while ago I learned about the concept of being interruptible. Where we need to live our life not so structured. If someone needs a hug or a shoulder to cry on you give them the time.  When you ask someone about their day you want hear more that just “I’m good” because you don’t care what is next on your schedule. You offer your time and your heart to people without thanks, without the thought of something in return and without rushing the next thing on your agenda.

In hebrews 13:2 it says “do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares”

We never know what someone is going through. How a smile or a hug or a “how are you? could truly change someone’s day”

But what would your life look like if you took the time to stop and pray with someone in the grocery store or even sit with someone sitting alone at the lunch table.   

The great commission In Matt 28:19 says Go therefore and make disciples of all nation’s baptizing them in the name of the father the son and the Holy Spirit teaching them to OBSERVE all that I have commanded you.”

First of all “Go” in the original Greek is Pâo. And it’s actually translated to “in your going” so as we are going in all that we do we are to make disciples. Jesus always allowed himself time to stop in place to place not always focused on the schedule everyone else around him was looking at.

Obviously schedules can be good. In school we can’t walk away from our schedules and in life we can neglect deadlines. But, how can you live your life in a way that takes time to see other people in their time of need. Verse 20 in Mathew says “teaching them to OBSERVE all that I have commanded you” how can we be more observant to meet people’s needs and more interruptible in our daily lives. Hospitality doesn’t always look like a casserole sometimes it looks like 2 people sitting in silence on a park bench. So how can you live your life with a hospitality that looks risky? How can you live your life with a hospitality that truly cares for people?