Creative Ways to Practice Hospitality That We Might Be Overlooking

A Balm of Comfort

When the Bible talks about hospitality, it is very much talking about relieving people’s needs. In the New Testament hospitality means providing a meal, a bed, foot washing, or oil. There’s a sense of hospitality being a sweet balm of comfort in a world that is just fraught with dirt, tension, and strife. It is interesting to me that hospitality is also a requirement of elders in your church. They are to be hospitable.

As far as other forms of hospitality, often in our American evangelical context, we think of hospitality as having the grownups over for a meal. But I think we should think about the kids in the neighborhood and what’s going on in their lives.

Kent and I have adopted four children, we have been licensed foster parents, and so we’ve had a number of children in our lives whose pain and anxiety is deep and hard. And so do not overlook the children and single parents in your neighborhood.

Be alert to the fact that hospitality isn’t just for the people who may be your easiest go-to type. In our case, when our kids were little, one of the ways we would minister to the kids in the neighborhood was just to let them have kids over for dinner, as they were able to.

Just include your family, be a good listener, and think about how you can make this world a little more beautiful, a little more pleasant, and a little less filled with strife for the people in your neighborhood.

Rosaria Butterfield is the author of The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World.

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