Living a life of hospitality

​I think if I ever had to sum up the Jesus story to someone it would go something like this: "you are welcome in my home - just as you are."

I think if I ever had to sum up how we've too often come to interpret that story, it would go something like this: "once you get your act together, you will be welcome in my home." 

I will speak from experience to the greatest risk of how we've come to interpret that story. When we go through the world believing we need to get people ready to enter our home, we overestimate just how ready our home is for them to enter. 

When we go through the world passionately wanting to fix others, we can overlook some things that might need fixing in ourselves. 

When I think of Jesus, one word that always comes to mind is hospitable: friendly or welcoming to strangers or guests. 

When I think of Jesus, I think of Hebrews 13:1-2 - Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Angels unawares... we never know who it is we are accepting into our home. Or rejecting. 

We often have no idea what people are going through in their lives that contribute to the behaviors we use to justify our rejection. Things that contribute to our inhospitableness.   

I've become deeply curious the last several years about the things people have gone through in their lives. When I speak, I frequently say I'm not nearly as interested in knowing who you are now as I am in knowing where you've been. Knowing what you've been through. 

Because the reality is, we can't truly know anyone today until we truly know the yesterdays that have shaped them. 

Jesus had an advantage on us in this regard. He was Jesus - he already knew people's yesterdays. Because he knew them, compassion was an easy instinct for him. Because he knew the battles people had faced, he wanted nothing more than to invite them into a space where they could feel safe and protected. 

Invite them ust as they were. Invite us just as we are. 

But us, we have to trade judgment for curiosity. We have to trade the instinct to think we know someone's story for the possibility we no nothing about it at all. We have to be willing to the explore the idea that we are rejecting people for doing things they might be doing as a result of living a life of rejection. 

We have to be willing to trust that becoming our best self happens when we start thinking about how we can make our home open to all, and not how we can make everyone worthy of our home. 

That's a hard way to think about things some days. It's a hard life to craft. But as I look around the world at all the people who are homeless - both in reality and in the way they feel - my prayer is we'll all pay a little more attention to that craft. 

A craft far more committed to accepting people than sorting them.