Hospitality–Sometimes it’s More about Receiving than Giving

Every pastor’s wife has one.  It’s on a shelf, tucked away in a den somewhere.  It’s tacked on a hallway wall space where not too many guests walk by, or it’s folded away in a drawer ready to come out once a year for the Christmas season.

It’s that gift that someone from the congregation has given you that you aren’t quite sure what it is or how to use it . . . or you really just think it’s ugly, but you don’t want to offend them by not having it up somewhere!

My grandmother was a pastor’s wife for many years and she told me,

“You can always find a way to display the things that people give you in your home.  If you don’t receive what someone has given you, you withhold a blessing God wants to give them for giving.”

 

Those wise words have stuck with me for many years, and they have helped me to graciously receive a number of interesting hostess gifts over the years that people have handed me when they walked through my front door.

I haven’t always been so good about receiving from my guests, because for a lot of years I thought that hospitality was primarily about giving to others—putting out fancy food on my grandmother’s china on the table bedecked with fresh flowers and handwritten place cards for each guest.

Of course, it’s fine to be hospitable in this way, but I often found when I was in the middle of harried preparations for the next Sunday dinner after church or snacks for home Bible study and I didn’t have time to vacuum, the Holy Spirit would whisper to me: 

“Wendy, Wendy you are worried and upset over many things. Choose what Mary chose“ (See Luke 10:38-42).

 

Do I want people to walk away from time in our home feeling like they can never live up to my delicious cooking or table display?  Or do I want them to leave thinking:

“I can do that. She didn’t even get flustered when she came home to find that the pork roast had burnt because her convection oven thermostat was broken.  She wasn’t afraid to pull out a box of frozen pizza or cook up some omelets. I can do that!”

 

I have found over the years that our best times of hospitality have been when I have been willing to receive gifts and help from others. Like the time when the believing Albanian couple came to our door with a bottle of wine for us to share with our meal, a regular practice in their country. Or the time when I had laundry on the line which needed to come down and the food wasn’t ready, so the single mom, who was also a part of the guest list that day, offered to take it down and fold it for me while I kept on with meal preparations.

Of course, I wouldn’t have had just any guest fold my underwear! But I have also learned from others who have hosted me in their homes that I have felt most comfortable in places where I was treated like one of the family.

The choir I toured with in Bible School was billeted in people’s homes. I once stayed overnight with a woman whom I will never forget because she didn’t have us sit down in the formal living room and go through the typical litany of questions like,

“Where are you from?  What program are you studying in at the school? How many people are in your family?”

 

This lady just made us feel like a part of the family as we relaxed and laughed and enjoyed each other’s company.

I know not everyone of us has that extroverted personality or natural gifting for making others feel at home, but I do know that we can use our home to be a blessing to others if we are willing to receive from them.  It might mean we need to swallow our pride and serve a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to a hungry college age young man because our spaghetti has run out (we saw that when we were guests in someone’s home once!).

But in these small and yet significant ways we can minister God’s grace to others in our homes, even with that mystery item displayed on the shelf.  Maybe it will just become a conversation piece you can use to make the next person who walks through your doors feel like they are coming home.