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31 Days to Hospitality::Day 6 The Barriers

October 6, 2012 by Edie Wadsworth 24 Comments

This is day 6 in a 31 day series on hospitality. You can start from the beginning here.

Brave hearts shine with the divine presence; like God they are free, they are welcoming and accepting, they are strong yet gentle. They are wondrously available.

You have all the same excuses I do for not opening yourself to others.

You’re busy. You don’t have the skill set. Their problems are too much. Their life is a mess. Your life is a mess. You’re too impatient. You’re not kind enough. You don’t even like them. You don’t have anything to offer. What does it really matter?

Turns out, in the end, it’s all that really matters.

All that other stuff we spend most of our lives doing—-that’s what doesn’t matter. Trust me, I’m the queen of meaningless minutiae.

But those people that we pass by everyday, that we discard, that we overlook, that we disdain, that we can’t stand, that we don’t get—-those people need us and we need them.

So let’s call the problem what it is.

We are selfish, prejudice, self-centered, arrogant, and desperately afraid.

We are afraid that we’ll be exposed for what we really are. We are afraid of rejection. We fear people who aren’t like us. We are too self-absorbed to be bothered.

And if those are not your barriers to making yourself available to others, you know what yours are. We’re all in the same sinking ship.

But here’s one thing that is true. You can spend your whole life hiding behind possessions and gadgets and busy-ness and fear and you will never know the joy of true relationship.

Yes, it will break your heart. Yes, it will be messy and terrifying. Yes, you will be broken and humbled and changed.

But the alternative is a mediocre loneliness that will eventually smother you to death.

Open your heart and live.

Your willingness to be alive and vulnerable will welcome others to do the same.

When you extend your heart to someone, you are, in bravery, extending them a lifeline.

Be brave. Step into the light. Someone’s life is hanging in the balance. And the irony is—–it may be yours.

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quote above from Radical Hospitality by Lonni Collins Pratt

31 Days to Hospitality:: Day 5 Winter in my Heart

October 5, 2012 by Edie Wadsworth 14 Comments

This is day 5 in a 31 day series on hospitality. Some seasons are not for hospitality but even then, He’s making us ready. Click here for the rest of the series. Thanks for coming along the journey. I’m glad you’re here.

When my house burned to the ground in December of 2010, I found myself in desperate need of someone to show hospitality to me.

I needed somewhere to sleep and I needed someone to find clothes for me to wear.

I needed someone to listen to my gut wrenching cries and tell me that light would shine again.

I had nothing to give. All I could do was sob.

Some seasons are like winter in your heart.

It’s during those times that you learn how to live in the skin of someone in need.
It’s then that you learn to cling to the only Hope there is.

Don’t despise the winter grace.

It’s then that you learn the blessedness of poverty and despair.

When someone else feeds your hungry soul, you learn to recognize those who starve.

God is leading you through this deep and wretched valley to make you blessed.

And when He brings you out again, you will see your brother with new eyes.

Your suffering will have made you perfectly fit to pour out your life for others.

Every time I hear this song, I think of my dear friends who live everyday in heartache.
This life is a veil of tears but Christ will raise us up and the Light will shine again.

31 Days to Hospitality::Day 4 Making Room for Others

October 4, 2012 by Edie Wadsworth 31 Comments

This is day 4 of a 31 day series on hospitality. To find a listing of the other ‘days’, click here.
Before we prepare the house for hospitality, we’re working on the heart issues. Don’t worry, it’s a long series and we’ll get to all the fun stuff!

We talked a little about what hospitality is and what it is not.

We’ve even conceded that we need each other.

But hospitality doesn’t come just because you have a better understanding of what it is.

Hospitality follows closely behind its friend humility.

C.S. Lewis gave the best definition of humility I’ve heard when he said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less.”

And that may be our biggest barrier to hospitality.

We are so full of ourselves that there’s no room to welcome anyone else.

Our thoughts are so consumed by all the details of our own selfish lives that we’re not even that curious about other people.

Humility takes the stance, “I don’t know you or understand you but I’m willing to empty my heart just a little of myself and welcome you in.”

We come to relationships and even to strangers with such an agenda. We need them to like us, to do something for us, to make us feel a certain way.

When it comes right down to it, we manipulate the majority of the people in our lives to do what we want them to do.

When is the last time you came to a relationship emptied of yourself, without your own agenda, and sought to know them and find out their need?

Wouldn’t our marriages be different if we weren’t always trying to get our way?

It’s called putting yourself in someone else’s shoes—-living in their skin.

And that is the very humility and love that Christ demonstrates toward us. He is humility incarnate.

“He emptied Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

I despair this morning that I’m so full of self, that I come to every single relationship ready to plow my way through my own agenda.

But Christ has made the perfect exchange.

He takes on my pride and gives me His humility.

He takes on my lies and gives me His truth.

He takes my sin, death and darkness and gives me life and salvation.

We wear His humility and we get a glimpse of what it’s like to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

Hospitality is learning to live toward others with His borrowed love, in His perfect humility.

He gives us what we don’t have in exchange for what He has in abundance.

Lord, give us Your humility, teach us to give ourselves to others and forgive our stubborn selfishness.

Here’s a few practical tips on making room for others. It won’t feel natural at first. It’ll seem contrived. But keep at it and you’ll see your heart grow and change.

1. Pray specifically that Christ help you see others through His eyes.

2. When you encounter someone today, ask them a few questions about themselves. I have a friend that is so good at this. She is naturally curious about people and makes you feel like your life is so interesting. You could talk to her for an hour and she’d never once turn the conversation to herself. But be aware how quickly we all turn things back to our own lives, our own agenda. This is takes practice and once you become conscious of it, you’ll see what I mean.

3. Let yourself linger with thoughts of that person. What must his life be like? What are his struggles? Is there any way I could help or be of some encouragement?

4. Practice the same skills with your family. You won’t make a ten year old any happier than by really listening, asking questions and being interested in what they’re doing.

Try it, with your own family, your coworkers, a perfect stranger and see if you don’t find that it’s not that hard to make room for others.

Pretty soon, you’ll have spaces in your heart that are emptied of self and ready to meet others.

And that space you make for others is the beginning of hospitality.

31 Days of Hospitality:: Day 3 We Need Each Other

October 3, 2012 by Edie Wadsworth 28 Comments

This is day 3 in a 31 day series on hospitality. You can find a listing of the other days here.

“Hospitality is a lively, courageous, convivial way of living that challenges our compulsion either to turn away or to turn inward and disconnect ourselves from others.”

Our rugged American individualism hasn’t really done us any favors where hospitality is concerned. Combine that with our obsession with electronics and you have, perhaps, the loneliest group of people that have ever lived.

We are desperately lonely.

To fight off that desperation, we fill our schedules to overflowing. “Maybe if I cram in one more thing, the ache will go away.” At least I won’t be alone in my loneliness.

When that doesn’t work, we settle for the company of screens—our phones and iPads and computers.

We hide behind our schedules and all our gadgets so much that we don’t even really see each other anymore.

Occasionally, when a crisis hits, we are jarred awake to our need for others but for most of our lives, we live in blurry state of self-sufficiency and self-absorption.

But, we were never meant for this modern isolationism.

Hospitality has its roots in the ancient world, where caring for strangers was a matter of life and death. They were keenly aware of their need for each other and it was a matter of survival.

Our modern conveniences have tricked us into thinking we can do this alone. But the deep ache in our hearts tells us another story.

We are all pilgrims on the same journey and it’s as if we are walking on the same path but ignoring each other. We don’t see our neighbor’s needs or even our own for that matter because we’ve so numbed and distracted ourselves. Stop and look around. People are hurting. They are lonely and despairing. They need someone who sees them. They need a kind word, a good deed. And the truth is, so do we.

In our haste and distraction, we’ve stopped looking at each other.

Do you remember the last person you actually looked in the eyes? I have to really think on that one. Did I even look my own children in the eyes today?

We are not rugged individualists at our core. We are vulnerable, lonely people who NEED each other.

And not only have we stopped caring for each other, we’ve stopped seeing each other.

Hospitality, in the truest sense, is our need to be known and loved—to really be seen.

It is not primarily the opening of our homes but the opening of our hearts to receive others. To really receive them.

We cannot learn to be gracious until we learn to be available.

We cannot learn to be available to someone we won’t even look at or acknowledge.

It’s not so much food we need from each other but love and kindness.

This kind of hospitality doesn’t require a perfectly ordered guest room or a gourmet meal; it requires an open heart, a heart willing to really see someone else and welcome him.

Today’s challenge::: Put down your gadget and really look at the people in your life. Look right into their eyes. Acknowledge that this is a person who you need and who needs you.

This is the face of God in your life today—–this is the antidote for our collective loneliness.

We need each other. Don’t go it alone.

31 Days of Hospitality:: Day 2 Every life is sacred

October 1, 2012 by Edie Wadsworth 31 Comments

This is day 2 in a series on hospitality. You can find the others days of the series here!

We take a radical position when we insist that it all does matter. Life is holy ground.

Every Sunday at my church, we start our service by confessing that ‘we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves’. Every single Sunday I can think of specific instances in my own life where this confession nails me to the wall. And my worst grievances are against the very ones I love the most.

Perhaps part of the reason we so mistreat our neighbor is our failure to recognize who he is.

We keep our hearts and our doors locked up tight because we have failed to see the image of God in the eyes of the stranger or even in the eyes of our own children, for that matter.

We march through life using people for gain, trampling on their hearts, or worse yet, ignoring them altogether.

We have forgotten that this is life and death.

These relationships where we live our lives are holy ground. And it matters immensely how I tread on this soil.

When we are in the presence of others, we are in the presence of Christ himself.

True hospitality sees the neighbor without all the distinctions. He is not white or black, gay or straight, rich or poor. He is the image bearer of God and we must honor him with all the love and respect with which we would honor the very presence of Christ in our midst.

He is holy ground and if we will open ourselves to him, we will never be the same—–because true hospitality is transforming.

It is not political correctness.

It is not social grace.

And it is most certainly not tolerance.

It is an openness to know and love our neighbor that can only come from Love incarnate—-from the One who so wanted to know us that He crawled into our skin and became a man.

The one who so loved us that He drug Himself, half-dead to a cross to die for us.

His hospitality toward us wasn’t an afterthought or a means to impress others.

His hospitality was dangerous. Holy ground always is.

But He came right into our Hell and broke down every barrier to get to us.

He gave no thought to what it would cost Him.

Yet, we spend our entire lives building those walls back in a desperate effort to protect ourselves, to hide our secret sins, and to guard ourselves from heartache.

May He tear it all down and expose us and make us vulnerable.

May He jar us awake from our selfish slumber so that we learn to see His children through His eyes and may He forgive us for every time we fail.

And tomorrow, when we meet our neighbor, may we see him with the fresh eyes of wonder and treat Him with honor—not for who he is but for whose he is.

“We catch a glimpse of each other, we sense the smell of God, and although we rush away from the holiest of moments, we are utterly changed. Life slams us into God…..and we realize that behind all the ordinary stuff there is something more dazzling and real than we can understand. Life is holy ground.”

quotes from Radical Hospitality.

31 Days to a Heart of Hospitality:: Day 1 What Hospitality is Not

September 30, 2012 by Edie Wadsworth 50 Comments

“Hospitality is a personal response to your own need to connect with other people. This need is at the core of what it means to be human. Your entire humanity, your identity itself, is wrapped up in your need to connect. The real question is not how dangerous the stranger is. The real question is how dangerous will I become if I don’t learn to be more open.”

what is hospitality?
This series on hospitality has been growing inside my heart for a lifetime.

Because really, isn’t it the ache of every human heart—to be known, to be loved?
But we have exchanged the riches of the word for something shallow and meaningless.

Hospitality is not a perfect Martha Stewart table setting.

It is not the smell of homemade bread, the clank of the right wine glasses, or the beauty of fresh flowers on the nightstand—-as wonderful as those things are.

It is not, in fact, even, the gathering of a few perfect strangers into your home to share fellowship and food.

You can have all those things and more and still miss hospitality.

Because true hospitality is born in the heart.

We learn it from our Father, who takes us into His own family, washes us clean in the waters of Baptism and gives us a robe of righteousness. He prepares a feast for us every Sunday at His table where He feeds us on the true body of blood of Himself, giving us life, forgiveness and salvation. He gives all this freely and makes us His own sons and daughters.

After we’ve feasted on His riches, He says, go do likewise.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Feed him, give him drink, clothe him and welcome him into your heart.

But we are also the sons and daughters of Adam.

And when we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves, He welcomes us again to His table, to forgive us and feed us so that we will slowly but surely be strengthened in the faith to love as He loves.

Hospitality is at the core of who we are, as humans and especially as christians.

It is desire of our Father’s heart.

May it become our desire too.

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Unless otherwise specified, the quotes I use will be from the book Radical Hospitality.

We will answer the question, ‘What is hospitality’ and we will delve deep into what it really means to be open and vulnerable to others—to truly welcome them into your life.

On the fun side, I’ll be sharing recipes and practical tips for making others feel welcome and at home.

Click here to go back to the eBook page!