Currently I’m reading Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine Pohl.
It has been thought provoking and thus far has challenged my notions about hospitality. Here are a few excerpts that I believe are worthy of some thought.
A shared meal is the activity most closely tied to the reality of God’s Kingdom, just as it is the most basic expression of hospitality.
Seeing Jesus in every guest … reduces the inclination to try to calculate the importance of one guest over another.
“The tasks aren’t what hospitality is about, hospitality is giving of yourself.” If hospitality involves sharing your life and sharing the life of others, guests/strangers are not first defined by their need.
(Meal time) is the time when hospitality looks least like social services.
Simple acts of respect and appreciation, presence and friendship are indispensable parts of the affirmation of human personhood.
“… the pinnacle of lovelessness is not our unwillingness to be a neighbor to someone, but our unwillingness to allow them to be a neighbor to us.”