a few hints on hospitality, from The Carpenter's daughter

After hearing her song, "No One Ever Cared for me Like Jesus", I've been playing Steffany Gretzinger's album Forever Amen on repeat.  It just takes me to a place of worship...and that is a good place to dwell. Her song "Remember" has been hitting home this week, about how Jesus took the altar, and turned it into a table.

The places we have sacrificed and sacrificed, the places we have tried and tried, worked and given our best effort, the places we have bled and given and run dry...our altars...He came to reshape into a table. 

He was the final sacrifice, so that what was a painful altar, again and again unable to bridge the gap or change the human heart, was now a relationship, sitting with Jesus, reunited with our Father. 

Jesus, friends. He was a TABLE man.  

He made them. He sat at them, even ones He wasn't supposed to. He washed feet at them, He served at them. I love how the show The Chosen shows Jesus spending hours around rough, wooden tables with rough, weathered people...eating, drinking, praying, crying, chatting, laughing, loving. He multiplied food, he cooked it, he supplied it, he broke it. There were awkward moments. There was painful silence and disappointment. There was discipleship and learning and teaching and decisions made and faith offered, all around the table with Jesus.

That altar no one could ever seem to change things with, HE changed.  He carved and sanded it into a table, that He might sit and eat and dwell among us...that it might now be about our relationship with Him and about what HE has done.

I think this is why hospitality is so important, friends. I think sitting and serving and speaking and praying and laughing and dwelling was Jesus's work...I think it's supposed to be our work.  

Hospitality ministry reaches deeper...is more meaningful, is more transparent, more comforting, more challenging, more relational, more daily-life altering...than any lesson I have taught, than any sermon I have preached, than any missions trip I have worked.

Here's a few things I have learned over the years of very imperfect hospitality that might help as you pray through how to turn altars into tables, with His help and heart.

1) Let go of the altar experience. If there is anything He taught us in all of His hospitality, surely it is that unlike the ornate golden altars, the table was about the heart...not the performance. It was about the relationships, not the sacrifices. 

Let go, friends, the perfect home. Let go the perfect behaviors of your children, the perfect flairs of your dishes, the perfect atmosphere. The people coming aren't perfect, and neither are you, and this sitting together thing is about genuine relationship, not perfection.

I know it's hard. I fight it still. I fight down the Martha and tap into the Mary, still...praying as I prep, as I plan, as I help the kids be a part, "Not about us. Not about the food. Not about perfect. All about you, Lord, give us opportunities to love others well tonight, in your name."

That is our purpose.  Not our performance...but tangibly, fragrantly, transparently giving and sharing His love with those He brings around our tables.

2) Make a meal plan and stick with it.  Every Sunday night I make a general meal plan for the next week, and no matter who comes, how many, or when, I stick with it. When it's already planned...and you bump into someone unexpected, or have a good conversation, or see a need, or the Lord lays someone on your heart and mind, you can just say, "Hey, we're having meatloaf tonight for dinner! Do you and your daughter want to come?" without having a panic attack. You were already making meatloaf. You already have what you need to do it...just add an extra pound of beef and a few more potatoes. 

3) Plan for spontaneous hospitality. If I decide I will wait and see how our week pans out, and then if there is space, invite someone into it...there is NEVER space. 

So we have three nights a week at our house that we always know we will be having someone for dinner. The kids know. Matt knows. Those nights work with our general schedule.  We don't always know who those people will be...often leaving spaces and praying for the Lord to provide the people...but we know there WILL be people. 

This means we are always praying for and listening to the Lord to send us those He wants.

When Matt sees a co-worker struggling, or realizes there is someone he wishes he knew better, he invites them for one of those nights, and I am happy to receive his text...because I already knew someone would be coming. When I wonder if the family fighting cancer is doing ok, I ask if we could bring them dinner on Monday. When I know the neighbor just lost a loved one, I text and ask if we can have their kiddos Friday night. 

Two weeks ago we walked by some very guarded neighbors, only to have them share with us that they've been in the hospital with covid, and all struggling. I could say, right then, "I'm bringing dinner tomorrow night, ok, so please don't stress about that tomorrow."  I already knew what I was making tomorrow night, and that tomorrow night was already set aside to serve someone, so it was easy to DO it.

4) It is a family affair.  If it's not supposed to be perfect, nor supposed to encourage perfection in people, then forget how you would set the table and how you would round the cookies. If this is Jesus work, then let the little children COME.  

Lily and Sofie take turns every night one setting, one clearing after. Nora and Ben are covered in flour every dessert I've made the past three years. Whichever one of us six is up to pray that night still prays, even if it is Ben's, "Blessh Daddy, Blessh Mommy..." Someone usually spills something, one of the children always says something I wish they had not. 

My floors are NEVER as clean as I wish they were, and so often the food isn't quite what I had hoped. But man, do the kids love to get to know people better. How precious are the stories we pull from amazing and imperfect people. How good it is at times to share our own, to all be not alone in our corners of the world. How valuable to know how to pray. How to help, how to live alongside.

5) It doesn't have to be dinner. Food just helps. Every time I make cookies or breads, I make double. I freeze half and when a mom drops off their kid to play, I can say, "Come have some coffee and some pound cake" (we are learning things about the South and pound cake!) and suddenly conversation seems easier.  When I learn that today was the neighbor's birthday, Lily and Sofie make a card and run a plate of cookies to their door.  

"Ask them about their best birthday memory ever!" I will encourage as they head out the door, or "Find out what kind of dessert their family always made for their birthday" and sometimes it takes forever for the girls to return because lonely people...lonely people are more most of us than you thought.

6) Do everything you possibly can ahead. Every time we finish a pot of coffee, I clean, fill and reset thecoffee maker, ready to push "start" when guests arrive, and not having to worry about another thing after dinner. The girls often set the table at 3 in the afternoon, because they had a lull in activity and prefer to get it done. 

I often do food that can be made a few hours ahead and stuck in the fridge, ready to pop in the oven at 5...taking our time and working on it as I can. I'll make the whole batch of cookies and put the balls of dough in the fridge for later baking. I'll pre-chop all the veggies and dump all the spices in a small bowl and have all the liquids in a cup in the fridge, all ready to throw together for meals I can't make ahead. I do almost all of this with the kiddos...sometimes with multiplication tables or memory verses, but always a together effort (and some sweet one-on-one time, too). 

The purpose of this is so that all the dishes are done, all the prep is finished, all the crazy is past when the guests arrive. This is my Mary strategy, because now when they come, I can engage. I can sit. I can focus. I can help the kiddos. I can serve it and SIT, instead of needing an hour to get my mind and pace to slow down. When dinner is done, Sofie can stack all the dirty dishes by the sink, Lily can serve cookies or pie and coffee (which she adores) and we can dwell and enjoy.

7) No one is off table if no one was off table with our Lord. Many have been the times that I have privately said to the Lord, "Not him. Not them. We don't really know them, they'll think that's weird. We have nothing in common. He really intimidates me. I've only talked to them like three times!"

He reminds me again and again that this is His plan, His purpose. People, His Creation.  If hospitality is about loving others well in Jesus' name, then I don't get to pick. If He brings the same person to mind or heart or sight two or three times, we invite them. If there is an obvious hurt or crisis or obvious way we could help, that's it. No thinking. He can deal, He knows why, He knows what is needed. He can handle it if it's a disaster.

Almost every single time, I have walked away from those situations totally blessed. Sometimes, I realize He brought that person in FOR ME. Often, I realize things weren't how I thought. Always, I am enriched, enriched alongside of my family, by listening to, hearing, seeing, eating with, spending time with people totally unlike us.

Because of Haiti, we had people from EVERYWHERE in every language with every belief and quirk and conviction around our table continually...and it has SHAPED us into who we are today.  I cannot cut us short now that we are on a new field by only growing from people who are easy for me or people I think are like me, or people who don't intimidate me.

As we work to be His Kingdom--not dazzling Micheline stars or Martha Stewarts, but simply fragrant (2 Cor. 2:15) and faithful-- I pray this with you, the hand-written prayer still taped to my cupboard in Haiti.

Let us invest in this preparation 

a lovingkindness toward those who will partake.

We are agents of a deep eternity,

whose prepared meals might

feed more than the body,

nourishing also the hearts

and hopes of those

sometimes-weary souls

who are well-served by our labors.

Every Moment Holy, Douglas McKelvey