Hospitality

I don't *do* new year's resolutions.

However, I read "Heaven at Home" while I was on the cruise and it got me thinking and really challenged me. This is a sequel to a book I read last summer, "Don't Make Me Count to Three" (also excellent). I gleaned a lot of great ideas for sibling peace and love (that's for a future blog post) and there were a lot of great chapters, but I was particularly struck by the final one: hospitality. Before I began the chapter I thought to myself, "I'm a Southern girl, and my mom is (practically) Martha Stewart--I ooze hospitality, it's in my blood". {Insert, "pride goes before fall" or God knocking some sense into me, whichever.} So, imagine my surprise when the opening of the chapter talked about how she saved this one for last since it would be so easy--she is a type A clean freak with a spotless house who loves to have people over and is a Southern hospitable girl. {In my head} "This can't be good".

Ginger Plowman talked about the difference between genuine hospitality and entertaining. She wrote about her husband and kids hiding from the tornado (that was her) before company came as she madly made things perfect. {Guilty.} She talked about the pride she took in how her home was decorated, the perfect centerpiece, the illusion of perfection she reflected to outsiders and the pleasure she got from the compliments that came from it {Ouch, ouch, ouch. Guilty again.}. She then pointed out that true hospitality is opening your home when it's not convenient, when things aren't perfect and when it necessarily isn't the best time for you--hospitality is about loving and serving others. Not about perfection, or more accurately, the illusion of perfection. Hospitality for a Christian is opening your life and home to others so that they can see Jesus through you and so He can work in their lives.

As I thought about it, and have since been praying about it, I have been struck by now not-hospitable I am. So, I don't resolve, but I am praying that 2011 will be the year that I learn to be genuinely generous and hospitable. Stop by sometime, unannounced even, and I'll push the clean pile of laundry to the other side of the couch and we'll have a cup of coffee. :)