How do you show hospitality?

Is it hard? Is it easy?

What is hospitality for you? Do you invite people over to your house or make/give gifts?

Are you hospitable?

Once, in a peer discipleship group, I read a book over hospitality. When I was waiting for my copy to arrive, I was telling a friend about the book and my friend had read the book before. She gave me some great advice. She enjoyed the book, but warned me that there may be things I am unable to do simply because the author was a homeowner and I am a renter. When I read the book, I agreed with my friend. The author did a great job at talking about hospitality and how she shows hospitality, but it was what she was able to do with the resources and time that she possessed.

Have you ever read a book like that? Or listened to someone like that? They have a great outlook but it left you thinking, okay… but how does that apply to me? I don’t have that capability.

I don’t think it is wrong to tell someone how you show or teach hospitality. But there should be self-awareness that what works for you may not work for someone else. We all have different resources and capabilities to serve and sometimes with different seasons, those resources and capabilities change.

Take me for example.

I have this dream. I want to get a house or even maybe a two-bedroom apartment and use the extra bedroom to rent out to a college student (discounted rate if in a house). It is a great dream and a dream that I keep looking at each year when I go over my finances. But it isn’t feasible right now. I have two options. I can a, not do anything and keep hoping or b, ask myself what I can do instead. I don’t have the finances to afford a two-bedroom apartment by myself, but that should not stop me from using the resources that I do have.

When I lived in a tiny, cramp one-bedroom apartment, I purchased a futon because I wanted a place for friends to sleep on if they needed a place to crash. Now I live in a more spacious one-bedroom apartment and upgraded to a much nicer sofa.

Maybe you’re thinking, that’s nice and all. But that sounds exhausting having people spend the night or I can’t do that right now. That’s okay! Maybe you like to cook or host game nights, then invite people over. Or perhaps you live close to the airport and don’t mind driving people to and from the airport.

I challenge you to write 10 things that you like to do. Then, reread that list. Ask yourself how you can serve people using those gifts.

We are called to be good stewards of God’s gifts. This world and our resources is not ours to keep. They ultimately belong to God. There’s a parable like that in the Bible. In the parable, there was a manager who had three servants. When the manager was going away on business, he gave each of the servants talents (currency) and instructed them to keep it safe. Two of the servants doubled their talents and one of them buried the talent. When the manager return home, the two servants who doubled the talents were praised and the servant who buried it was scolded. In fact, he was called slothful and said he could have at least invested it in the bank instead of burying it in the ground.

Maybe stewardship and hospitality are odd concepts to put together. It fits though. Hospitality is to show generosity and stewardship is to take ownership of someone or something that is not yours originally. As Christians, God calls us to be His stewards. God has entrusted us to manage and to care for his creations. This can be your finances, your home, your children, your job… everything that you have belongs to God. Doesn’t that sound like hospitality should be second nature to us?

Maybe you are like me and you have a dream, but you don’t have the means to put it into action. You can wait and waste that dream or you can consider what you can do instead. I have a dream to rent out a room for a college student. I am financially unable to do so in this season. But I have a couch that someone can sleep on. But I have an apartment with only a feline roommate that I can host lunches or study breaks for college students (I live close by to a big university, college students are a-plenty over here).

What can you do? What is on your list?

Elizabeth