Hospitality

Hospitality is something which happens in the small moments of our lives, but it is not accidental. We're all strangers in many places and being a stranger, an outsider, someone who doesn't belong can be an agony. One of the things Jesus reminds us is a blessing is to welcome the stranger. This is doing more than asking them in and offering food and water. It is being vulnerable and being genuinely interested in how the other is faring. Are they well, are their needs being met. How are they? How is their life journey going? Can I answer this question about myself. Have I slowed down enough to hear my inner self that is to shy or patient or frightened to express my heart's longing?

To be able to be available to the Christ in the stranger, we need to be in touch with Christ through our own prayers and sense of having our own hungers nourished and our thirsts quenched. We need to know a sense of being a grateful grafted or adopted member of this rather amazing body of Christ. It is not our birthright to belong, but a gift, and a gift we share with others who like us may feel like misfits, or strangers or pilgrims traveling through a strange land.

Who might I meet or encounter on the phone or at work, or in a social situation. Will I be able to be attuned to them, or be so distracted by my own multi-tasking agenda that I need to meet deadlines and get tasks done, and go whizzing by.

I'm a lot like the White Rabbit, late, late for a very important date. But maybe the date I'm really missing is the one to be mindful of here, right now. To listen for the unspoken desire of the person who helps with our housecleaning; to sense the loneliness of a shut in, or of the friend who just found she has cancer. Will we be Christ to each other this day? this week?