Reality and Hospitality

The leaders of my Wednesday night class at church are Jon and Kathy Mowry.  Each are knee deep in Christian work.  At the bottom of the paper they gave out the first day of class is written this sentence. "Hospitality is one of the hardest and most profoundly transformational Christian practices."  Hardest?  Hardest!

Both authors, Pohl and Schaeffer, agree there is a reality to consider in the realm of hospitality.  Pohl talks about the issues of safety that comes with strangers in your home, the complexity of raising a family in front of others, and when it takes longer for people to move on than originally thought. 

Schaeffer expounds, "It has not been an exciting succession of 'success.'  There have been sicknesses, accidents, depressions, discouragement, frustrations and exhaustion.  There has been a succession of difficulties which arise from having little money, a succession of temptations to give up, to call it too much, to say we have had enough and that we want to have a 'normal life like other people.' There have been what we feel sure are direct attacks of Satan to stop us, to make us give up." 

She continues, "If you read what the Bible says about living by 'faith', read in Hebrews the 11th chapter, and the first four verses of the 12th.  It is not an account of easy lives and a succession of 'high points.'  To say the least, there is a variety of things to be experienced.  It is far from a soft life (p.226)."

On the positive side Pohl highlights that each guest brings a gift to the hospitality table.  Workers in the places she interviewed often told stories of how the guest helped the workers through their sharing of encouragement and life experiences.  These moments helped make the hard ones worth it.

The Mowry experience points out that people with money no longer rely on hospitality.  Today it is no longer an issue of life and death.  But, could it, could it, mean the difference in the life or death of someone's spiritual life?

1 Timothy 3:2 tells us that hospitality was even a requirement for leadership in the early church.  It is rubber to the road Christianity.  Is it on your resume?