HOSPITALITY

I’m well on my way now with my first song. “Time Won’t Wait for Friends”. I shared a bit of it last week and even that has changed now. It’s about relationships and the passage of time. It’s a story that we can all identify in our friendships, but also about a story shared with me by another friend.

While visiting the Monastery in Pecos, N.M. last month I said something about their hospitality and wanting to talk a little more on the subject. Just the other day, I overheard a manager and crew meeting at McD’s. You tend to overhear a lot of things when you spend some time in solitude. Some would call it “eavesdropping”, but I just call it listening to my surroundings. I heard the manager say something like this, “I don’t care what they look like to you. Even if their dressed shabby and smelly, I want you to treat them just like any other customer.” Isn’t that the essence of hospitality? Sure, we’re more comfortable when we’re with people just like ourselves, but the object of hospitality is to make the stranger feel at home. I’m beginning to understand exactly what it feels like to receive genuine hospitality.

Even the words that we use trying to show hospitality sometimes fall quite short of our intentions. I remember receiving a note in my early days at Covenant from Dr. Masters after he had visited calling my attention to my use of the phrase, “It’s so nice to have you with us this morning.” I knew what he meant when I was told that repeatedly one Sunday morning and realized that I’m not a ham sandwich. One might have a ham sandwich, but you’re not having me.

I have a minister friend in Louisiana who was accused of “radical hospitality” last month. I received a note from someone who was helping a family member relocate to Ruston, Louisiana over the Labor Day Weekend. They had some special needs and found tremendous help from this minister and his congregation there. In the midst of it all, this person was able to connect the Ruston minister with me (once again it is a small world) and then sent me an email about the experience. The last time I called his number, it had changed, so it was great to get back in touch with my friend.

If McD’s is concerned about hospitality, how much more should we be concerned about it in the church? I seem to recall one of the ways that Jesus separated the sheep from the goats had a lot to do with hospitality. I experienced hospitality at worship last Sunday. Yes, I was back in Enid for the weekend. I found out that one of my “lectionary” friends were serving hamburgers after church, so I worshipped there. Actually it was one of the most unique and friendly services I have attended. It was held in the midst of one of the Habitat for Humanity Houses being built in Enid.

Grace and peace with a song in my heart,
SongWriter