Cultivate a Life of Hospitality that Flows from your Heart and Spirit

God’s love for me is beyond comprehension. This same love flows from God to everyone. As we become more like Jesus, we will grow in our love and service for others. May our lives be marked by a spirit and works of hospitality.

From their earliest days, monastic communities were known for hospitality. Our ancestors saw everyone they met as worthy of love and compassion. Even with walls around most monasteries, their doors were open to those beyond their community. As the transforming love of God works its way ever deeper into our hearts, it changes us. We become marked and changed by the gentle, kind, and gracious love of God. We start noticing that we are naturally extending this same kind of love to others. One of the ways we do this is through our hospitality.

Jesus entered into life. In the midst of others, Jesus welcomed all to Himself. Jesus welcomes you to be with Him. Find your way into the presence of Jesus, which is the Fruit of the Spirit perfected. Come, be with our God, who reminds us that we do not have because we have not asked. Let us make it a habit of asking our God to let us share in His divine love for others.

To live in the city is to meet all kinds of people. Each person we see is a recipient of divine love. We are each recipients of divine love. Let us expect that we will see the very person of Jesus in others and within ourselves. Notice that the love and presence of Jesus finds us as we are in this moment. In every moment, we are loved. We are loved even when we cannot love ourselves. This love is the foundation of every expression of Christian hospitality. Each and every time hospitality is expressed, it is a gift.

Each day, let us accept and embody this gift. With time, our wells of love, compassion, and grace within ourselves will deepen. God then invites us to extend hospitality to others from our deepening reserves. Within our capacity, context, and resources, let us cultivate a love for hospitality. We find ourselves invited into a love that starts with being hospitable towards those we meet. Love then extends into greater service to one another. The practice of hospitality is a profound gift to others and ourselves. It is a gift we want to flow outward from the deepest parts of ourselves.

Cultivate a life of hospitality that grows with time. We will extend love and service to others from the depths of our hearts and souls. Each of our lives and contexts are different. Let the gift of hospitality grow both inward and outward. We pray and expect God to show us ways to share this gift. We expect that God will also invite us to accept this gift from others. As we practice being hospitable, we practice welcoming one another as if they are Christ Himself.

• Reflect on the ways that you have experienced God’s hospitality for you.
• Pray that God would give you greater capacity to be loving and hospitable with others and yourself.
• Reflect on how you have gone about cultivating your inner posture of hospitality towards others.
• Meditate on why it is more difficult for you to extend hospitality to specific people or groups.
• Reflect on what capacity for hospitality currently exists within your life and resources.
• Celebrate the ways others experience your gifts of hospitality.
• Meditate on how your heart and soul can be freed to express hospitality to others in your daily life.
• Meditate on the ways that you can establish rhythms for hospitality in your life.
• As God has shared His divine love for others with you, what has surprised or delighted you?
• Grieve the times and ways you over extended yourself to be hospitable to others.
• Grieve the times and ways you took advantage of someone’s hospitality.
• Who in your life do you admire for their hospitality? Set time aside to share this appreciation with them.
• Meditate on ways you allow your heart and soul to express their hospitality in small daily interactions with others.
• In what ways do you struggle to enjoy the gifts of hospitality given to you from others, and from God?
• Meditate on the many ways you have and can express hospitality in your life and context.
• Reflect on boundaries that you need in your life to allow your hospitality to come from love and not obligation. Are there specific people that need unique boundaries?
• Contemplate the ways you could extend hospitality to yourself.