Today we will enjoy a special Thanksgiving Feast with our Eastview family. A special thank you goes out to the fellowship team for their incredible efforts to make this happen. Considering our past few messages focusing on biblical hospitality, we are reminded that eating together expresses acceptance and equality. Pot luck lunches can be significant if they focus on relationships not on the desserts! 😊 As we share this meal together, why not purposely find someone you don’t know well and set by them and get better acquainted, making your circle of care a little larger. Hospitality will not occur in any significant way in our lives or church unless we give it deliberate attention. Because the practice conflicts with so many contemporary values, we must intentionally nurture a commitment to hospitality.
Using hospitality as a lens through which we examine our homes and our church, we might see them differently. As a way of life, an act of love, an expression of faith, our hospitality reflects and anticipates God’s welcome. The way we welcome people, the interest we show in them and the time we take for them communicates to them that they are valued. A life of hospitality is much less about dramatic gestures than it is about steady work, faithful labor that is undergirded by prayer and sustained by grace. Part of our ability to sustain hospitality amid an unjust and disordered world comes from putting our small efforts into a larger context. God is at work in the world, and our little but significant moves participate in that work. Maintaining a larger picture allows us to share the burden even when we cannot solve the problem. When our lives are open to hospitality, opportunities will come to make a place for others. In doing so, our places and our lives will be enriched and transformed. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Blessings,
Rick