Credit: Abigail Keenan
This daily post is designed to help you live into our New Room Society covenant of practicing daily prayer together. Below is this week’s theme and daily practice.
Week 23: Hospitality
What happens when one person genuinely welcomes another? Why is this a particular superpower of Jesus people? And are there dangers here?
“Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.” Romans 12:13, The Message (MSG)
Don’t you find it interesting that hospitality has a creative (even playful!) element, according to Romans 12:13 (MSG)?
Faith communities, by their nature, come in so many shapes, sizes, and flavors; they are like a profusion of wildflowers, or a banquet put together by an entire village.
Many are the ways to welcome in the stranger.
It can be overwhelming, too.
In fact, it would be easy to give yourself entirely away in the work of Christian hospitality by opening your heart, your hands, the doors of the places where you live and work and minister.
Somewhere in there is a balance, a way of making yourself open without thinking that you — rather than Christ — are the savior of the world.
What might be helpful, as you consider the powerful and generative role of hospitality in the Christian life, is to consider the parables of the salt (Matthew 5:13), light (Matthew 5:14), and leaven (Matthew 13:33).
May you be salt, but not the whole meal.
May you be light, but not the entire city.
May you be leaven, but not the full loaf.
Sunday: St. Brigid of Kildare
St. Brigid (c. 451 – 525) was known as a woman of deep hospitality, which was frequently connected with healing. The story of St. Brigid’s cross tells the story of her gentle and creative spirit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigid’s_cross
Find materials to make a St. Brigid’s cross today, and allow this time to be your prayer and offering to God.