Many of us, especially when we compare ourselves with much of the world’s population, live with abundance, not scarcity. But we often act as if resources are scarce; we fear there won’t be enough, even before we begin sharing what we have. The problem may have much more to do with our willingness to respond than with our resources.
Currently I’m reading Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine Pohl.
It has been thought provoking and thus far has challenged my notions about hospitality. Here are a few excerpts that I believe are worthy of some thought.
A shared meal is the activity most closely tied to the reality of God’s Kingdom, just as it is the most basic expression of hospitality.
Seeing Jesus in every guest … reduces the inclination to try to calculate the importance of one guest over another.
“The tasks aren’t what hospitality is about, hospitality is giving of yourself.” If hospitality involves sharing your life and sharing the life of others, guests/strangers are not first defined by their need.
(Meal time) is the time when hospitality looks least like social services.
Simple acts of respect and appreciation, presence and friendship are indispensable parts of the affirmation of human personhood.
“… the pinnacle of lovelessness is not our unwillingness to be a neighbor to someone, but our unwillingness to allow them to be a neighbor to us.”
“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:28-31
I have been thinking about this passage for some time. I have concluded that I have mostly failed to keep the most important command. Of course, everyone is imperfect and fails to keep the command flawlessly. That is not what I am talking about. There is another dimension of failure that has characterized my efforts to love God; it is a failure to love God completely. Completely meaning not perfection but wholly … heart, soul, mind and strength. It has been my consistent desire to love God. For many reasons, my efforts to satisfy that desire have concentrated on loving God with “all my mind”. I’m not sure what the “correct” understanding of “all my mind” is, but, for me it has meant diligently applying study, reason, logic, knowledge, correct understanding, et al to show God how much I really love Him. My love for God has not devoid of my heart, soul and strength, but has my default mode has been my mind. The impact of such an unbalanced love on my relationship with God is serious.
A simple analogy of an “all my mind” love for Ann illustrates the problem. I’m pretty sure that Ann would not feel very loved if my time and efforts to my love her were confined to study, analysis, interpretation of, and correct response to every communication and situation in our relationship. For example, she would find little consolation in the ritual of kissing her and telling her “I love you”each morning if she knew that I did it only because it is “a correct way to express my love”. She would soon reject my kiss and ignore my words if that were the case. Undertanding Ann’s expectations of my love for her, how could I be so foolish to not understand God’s expectations, especially when he speaks so clearly?
A continuing goal of my journey is to understand the full experience of loving God with all my heart and all my soul and all my strength, not just with all my mind. Of course, I need not to forget there is the second greatest command, “love your neighbor as yourself” to be obeyed.