Outlive Your Life_ You Were Made to Make a Difference - Max Lucado [20]
Make a big deal of their arrival. Gather the entire family at the front door. Swing it open as you see them approach. If you have a driveway, meet them on it. If your apartment has a lobby, be waiting for them. This is a parade-worthy moment. One of God’s children is coming to your house!
Address the needs of your guests. First-century hospitality included foot washing. Modern-day hospitality includes the sharing of food and drink. Time to talk and listen. No televisions blaring in the background. No invasive music. Make sure everyone has the opportunity to speak. Go around the table and share favorite moments of the day or memories of the week. Like the Good Shepherd, we prepare a table and restore the soul.
Send them out with a blessing. Make it clear you are glad your guests came. Offer a prayer for their safety and a word of encouragement for their travel.
The event need not be elaborate to be significant. Don’t listen to the Martha Stewart voice, the voice that says everything must be perfect. The house must be perfect. The china must be perfect. Meal. Kids. Husband. Everything must be perfect. Scented guest towels, warm appetizers, after-dinner mints.
If we wait until everything is perfect, we’ll never issue an invitation. Remember this: what is common to you is a banquet to someone else. You think your house is small, but to the lonely heart, it is a castle. You think the living room is a mess, but to the person whose life is a mess, your house is a sanctuary. You think the meal is simple, but to those who eat alone every night, pork and beans on paper plates tastes like filet mignon. What is small to you is huge to them.
Open your table.
Even more, open your circle. Be certain to invite not just the affluent and successful, “but when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed” (Luke 14:13–14 NIV).
The Greek word for hospitality compounds two terms: love and stranger. The word literally means to love a stranger. All of us can welcome a guest we know and love. But can we welcome a stranger? Every morning in America more than 39 million people wake up in poverty.1 In 2008, 17 million households had difficulty providing food for their families.2 An estimated 1.1 million children lived in households experiencing hunger multiple times throughout the year.3 And this is in America, the wealthiest nation in the history of the world.
When we provide food stamps, we stave off hunger. But when we invite the hungry to our tables, we address the deeper issues of value and self-worth. Who would have thought? God’s secret weapons in the war on poverty include your kitchen table and mine.
A few months ago I was sitting at the red light of a busy intersection when I noticed a man walking toward my car. He stepped off the curb, bypassed several vehicles, and started waving at me. He carried a cardboard sign under his arm, a jammed pack on his back. His jeans were baggy, his beard was scraggly, and he was calling my name. “Max! Max! Remember me?”
I lowered my window. He smiled a toothless grin. “I still remember that burger you bought me.” Then I remembered. Months, maybe a year earlier at this very intersection, I had taken him to a corner hamburger stand where we enjoyed a meal together. He was California bound on that day. “I’m passing through Texas again,” he told me. The light changed, and cars began to honk. I pulled away, leaving him waving and shouting, “Thanks for the burger, Max.”
I’d long since forgotten that meal. Not him. We never know what one meal will do.
In one of Jesus’ resurrection appearances, he accompanies two disciples as they walk from Jerusalem to their village of Emmaus. The trail is a seven-mile journey, the better part of a day’s walk for grown, healthy men. They converse the entire trip. Jesus gives them an overview of the Bible, beginning with the teachings of Moses right up to the events of their day. Still, they don’t recognize him.
As they near their village, Jesus acts as if he is going