14.5 A Space

As you practice inviting people to share what you have and who you are it will become easier. Your surroundings will be formed by and for hospitality.

Be Formed by and for Hospitality

As you practice inviting people to share what you have and who you are, within this manageable structure, it will become easier. Your comfort and your instincts will change and so will your own surroundings, bit by bit, into a space formed by and for hospitality. Like the picnic basket picked up for one invitation and now available for many more, you’ll notice that you become equipped for welcome. 

You may not be ready to host a banquet, but you are able to offer a mug of tea to a friend. So you set it up: call your guest, set the space, the time frame, the consumable (tea of course!), and a loosely-committed-to activity. And then, before your friend comes over, you realize you only have one mug that you really like. You don’t feel like offering tea in a mug with a gas station logo on it (how did you even end up with that mug?) A quick run to Goodwill, and voila! Seventy-five cents later, you are set forever to offer a friend a mug you like! Your life is being transformed by generosity and welcome. 

Little changes in your surroundings will make it easier to offer welcome. And I have found these changes only happen when a guest is imminent. It’s an exercise in futility to wait until your space is “ready to receive a guest”. It will never feel ready. But the point is not for you to feel ready; it is to offer incarnate grace to another human desperately in need of welcome.