Still So Much To Learn About Biblical Hospitality

Thea and Louis in the home of Kwesi and Samira, Edinburgh

One of the things Paul has brought up in Romans 12 is the subject of hospitality--today what is a lost Christian art. Christian people think of hospitality as what you show when you open your home to another friend, but that's not hospitality, that's fellowship. In the OT, God told Israel to be hospitable to foreigners and strangers (that people you don't quite know). So hospitality OT style is to have people in your home that are "strangers". In the NT, "radical" hospitality would mean extending this grace even to your enemies.

Here's something to consider: How often do you "share your table" with people who are not such great friends with you--people who might even be very unlike you? Is your "hospitality" just a "Christian club" fellowship luncheon? What if you, on a regular basis, had people into your home who are not your friends?

I am forced to think about this kind of hospitality because this Christmas my daughter spent her first Christmas away from home. She was in Edinburgh visiting another fellow Agapian studying there. And the night before Christmas, she really missed home and the Christmas she was used to here in Singapore. But on Christmas morning, she went to church for service and a family invited her and her two friends home for a Chrsitmas lunch. This family always opens their home to "strangers" on Christmas Day. Thea, Sheng and Louis were so blessed!

If that wasn't enough, another young couple took the three of them home to their apartment for dinner that night. And this couple had just met the three for the first time at lunch in Brian and Anne's home that afternoon after church. What great Christian hospitality!

Thea, Sheng and Louis were so blessed, they felt like this was the best Christmas they had away from home. Thea said she was going to remember this Chrsitmas for a long, long time. It had such an impact on her.

Now, if you are like me, this type of generosity just does not come naturally to us. Singaporeans are often suspicious of strangers. And often we allow those suspicions to limit us in being truly hospitable in the biblical sense. That robs us of the joy of blessing those who really need our hospitality.

So I decided this morning that I am going to embark on a journey to practice true Christian hospitality and entertain strangers when God opens up such opportunities. It is time to pay forward for the way the Lord is looking after my daughter when she is away from home.

A couple on weeks ago, Ivy taught us what it really means to be hospitable while we were in her home in Holland. In fact, Thea is in Ivy' s house over the New Year now because everything in Leuven, her university town, has shut down over the holidays. And Ivy has so kindly offered to have Thea over for a week so that she has some warm, quiet place to study for her exams in mid-January. Again, what great hospitality!

There are so many out there the Lord wants to embrace in His love and He is looking for people like us to extend our arms to them in the spirit of true biblical hospitality! Thank you again Ivy; Brian and Anne; and Kwesi and Samira for teaching us the power of biblical hospitality!