relationships and community on Hospitality

Hospitality means opening our lives, and our homes, to those who believe differently than we do.

Hospitality, therefore, means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space ...

Hospitality should have no other nature than love.

Hospitality, when you get right down to it, is unnatural. It is difficult to place others first, because our inclination is to take care of ourselves first. Hospitality takes courage. It takes a willi...

A life of hospitality begins in worship, with a recognition of God's grace and generosity. Hospitality is not first a duty and responsibility; it is first a response of love and gratitude for God&...

Hospitality does not entail helping another so much as immersing oneself in a new reality, entering into a new relationship with one who before was unknown or unappreciated. The nothing of “being with...

The entertaining host seeks to elevate herself. And as Martha mentions, it’s a bit selfish. When the guest arrives, the entertainer announces, “Here I am. Come into my beautiful abode and have the hon...

Hospitality is not inviting people to our perfect homes; it is inviting them to our imperfect hearts.

Hospitality without a home (a place) is an oxymoron

Have you ever noticed the similarity between the words “hospitality” and “hospital?” That’s because both developed out of the need for accommodations during the medieval period, specifically when peop...

The challenge of hospitality, both personally and professionally, comes when we are stressed out or tired and we offer it grudgingly. The gift of hospitality comes when we find in the welcoming face o...

A Catholic priest recently told a gathering of friends about a time when he arrived in Israel late on a Friday afternoon, just as everything was about to shut down for the Sabbath. Public transportati...

Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.

In her book Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home , Jen Pollock Michel reflects on the nature of home in a transient age. In this short excerpt, Michel focuses on what life is like with...

In his excellent study of the famous Biblical passage on shepherds, ( The Good Shepherd: A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament ) , scholar Ken Bailey provides helpful context t...

We don't welcome the naked and hungry so they can be naked and hungry in our company. We clothe and feed. Hospitality is not toleration but transformation.

It is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings…If there is any c...

Scripture calls us to offer a radical welcome to strangers, but we are not able to give what we do not have. Before we can love our neighbor, we must love and care for ourselves so we can have somethi...

In the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, we find another resource for hospitality. The trinity shows God in relationships with Himself. Our Three-in-one God has welcomed us into Himself and invited u...

A man named Jim Haynes died last year at 87 years old, in Paris where he’d lived for decades. Jim Haynes was known as the “man who invited the world over for dinner.” Why? Because for more than 40 yea...

In his helpful book Peace Catalysts , Rick Love shares a poignant example of how sharing a meal can break down the familiar walls of status, power, and economics: In 2011, my wife, Fran, and I we...

Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ.

[A good host treats his guest so] that everything that is so well arranged at his host’s has not cost him, the host, any effort at all but has come about of itself.”

Not one person who comes through your door comes haphazardly. By sending that guest to you, God is giving you the privilege of cooperating with Him to move someone forward in their journey toward Jesu...

I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honor...

All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ...Each human soul has in a sense to enact for itself the gigantic humility of the Incarnation. Every ma...

Paul talks about “the table of the Lord” in 1 Corinthians 10:21. We are hosted by Jesus. In Roman Catholicism the bread itself is effectively the host, because it hosts the physical presence of Christ...

You, eternal Trinity, are Table and Food and Waiter for us. You, eternal Father, are the Table that offers us food, the Lamb, your only-begotten Son. He is the most exquisite Food for us, both in his ...

Many of us don’t have to board international flights to reach people from other religions and cultures. We just need to open our eyes, look around, and engage the nations in our own cites and towns….8...

For the times we neglect to care for our brothers and sisters in Christ, please forgive us, Lord. For the times we fail to welcome new people who look or act different from ourselves, please forgiv...