As mentioned a few weeks ago, I suffered a database error which caused me to lose access to all My Journey’s Weblog postings. I was able to rescue my data but unfortunately not in a blog format. I am in the process of creating web pages as an archive of the posts. The first page has been completed and is available on a link from the menu of my home page. Hopefully I will eventually create an index that will make reference easier.
Many of us, especially when we compare ourselves with much of the world’s population, live with abundance, not scarcity. But we often act as if resources are scarce; we fear there won’t be enough, even before we begin sharing what we have. The problem may have much more to do with our willingness to respond than with our resources.
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.”
Yesterday we attended our grandson Chance’s Brentwood High School graduation ceremony in Nashville. He is a great young man. He plans to attend Western Kentucky University this fall. We had a great day as well as weekend. Our stay concluded with breakfast this morning at the Pancake Pantry with Linda and Jim Arnett.
Today Meredith’s class had a poetry cafe, All the students had written poems and they read them in front of the class and guests.