Making Place for Others: The Loving Gift of Hospitality

Hospitality can take on many forms from opening one’s home to opening one’s heart in serving others. It is a mindset of setting other’s needs before our own because in doing so it points to Jesus, Who poured out His life like a drink offering. We serve Christ when we serve others. Believers are to be useful for the kingdom not simply take up space until Jesus returns. We are to be His hands and His feet and His words. His desire is for us to serve and the needs all around us are great.

We oftentimes are so preoccupied in our busy little lives that we are constantly looking inward and not outward – missing God given opportunities to “practice hospitality”. This could be a drink of cold water, a word of affirmation, shelter for a weary head or dinner for a hungry soul. To be sure, hospitality arrives in various forms. A dear aunt of mine would always pick up walkers on their way to catch a bus when it was raining and take them to the bus stop. Thoughtful was my aunt and thankful was the rider. Hospitality notices what is before them and takes action. In our self-focused world, hospitality stands out like a ray of sunshine on a bleak day.  

Hospitality towards others can also include words of affirmation, any acts of service, opening a home, offering a meal or a plethora of other things. It is basically being “other” focused to those in our spheres. See a need and seek to meet the need. And the needs are rampant. Taking the time to slow down enough to notice whom God has placed before us is important. We are never to be too busy or distracted that we miss the glorious opportunities right under our noses. Nor are we to be idlers – consumed with self and drifting from one thing to another with no focus outward. We are the losers when this happens. God desires cheerful service from His saints, sans grumbling and complaining and being too pre-occupied with self. He Who bled and died to give us eternal life deserves our best. Our attitudes are to be like that of our Lord Jesus as the Apostle Paul states in Philippians 2:6-8 (NIV): “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross!” And He did this for all of us. In obedience to His Word we are to model our lives after our Savior’s.