Cooking Spaghetti — Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

 

Your company is arriving in one hour.  The kids just pulled out all the toys you spent 30 minutes putting away.  The family room is now a wreck (for the third time that day).  Your meal isn’t turning out the way you hoped.  You are asking yourself why, oh why did you decide to entertain at all.  The stress is building, your patience with the children is running low and then your well-intentioned husband asks to invite someone else.  Please can someone just call for pizza?

 

Have you been there?  It is in those last moments before company comes over that I can feel like the biggest home-making failure.  I’m concerned about my house looking neat and clean.  I would like to serve food that is not only edible, but delicious.  And I want to come across as the girl who has it all together.

 

Then the doorbell rings.  And that is when everything that just happened in those last 59 minutes flies out the door.  I can greet my guests with a smile.  I’m excited they are here.  I’m interested in their lives, their joys, their challenges.  I’m looking forward to connecting over a half-decent meal and the mess that will most definitely ensue when all the kids enjoy playing together.

 

You see, while it is wonderful to serve amazing food, run everything on time and have your house be perfectly clean, when you boil it down, hospitality is about people.

 

The best hospitality focuses on the guests you invited into your home.  It is about making them feel welcome, comfortable and valued.  How easy it is to get wrapped up in the mechanics of entertaining and lose focus on the heart and reason of why you are doing this at all.

 

 

Take a look at Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42.

38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

41 “Martha, Martha,”the Lord answered,“you are worriedand upset about many things,42 but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Martha incorrectly maintained a focus on the busy preparations, even after her company had arrived.  Mary had chosen to focus on Jesus.  And while a meal still has to be cooked and a house prepared, how would our outlook change if we remind ourselves that genuine hospitality maintains a focus on people and not all the distractions that may arise?

 

What would happen if we prayed before we entertained?  What if we went into the afternoon or evening looking for ways to give God glory and engage Him into the conversations?  What if when hearing about any struggles your guests were facing, before your time was over, you prayed with them?  How would your focus on hospitality change?

 

Reminders for Hospitable Hearts:
  • Keep it simple. If you regularly try to overdo it and you end up stressed out, try keeping it simple and enjoyable.
  • Pray before your guests arrive asking the Lord to give you a heart focused on people.
  • Don’t stress when something goes wrong.  Inevitably, it will.  Give yourself grace.

So the next time you’re standing over the hot stove, feeling a little too warm (and wondering if you need to go put on something cooler), remember boiled down hospitality is all about the people.

Enjoy!

 

* Don’t miss out on tomorrow’s post where Melissa from Hive Resources will be talking about the connection between hospitality and faith.  And, if you’d like to see the Hospitable Hearts series at a glance, go here.