I Believe In Hospitality And I Cannot Do It

Of everything on this site, this is the one that carries a particular kind of weight, and I want to handle it carefully.

You believe in hospitality.

Not as a nice idea. As a conviction. You have read the passages, you have heard the teaching, and something in you says yes to all of it. The open door. The table. The stranger welcomed. You believe that is what a house is for.

And you cannot do it.

So the gap between what you believe and what happens in your life has become a place where you stand and accuse yourself, and the accusation is not about housekeeping. It is about whether you actually believe what you say you believe.

That is a much more serious wound than a messy hallway, and I want to go straight at it.

He sat in the tent door in the heat of the day

There is a scene in Genesis that is treated as the founding picture of hospitality in Scripture, and almost nobody reads what is actually in it.

And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground. (Genesis 18:2, King James Version)

Look at the setting. A tent door. In the heat of the day. A man sitting down because it is too hot to be doing anything else.

He is not prepared. There is no notice in that text. He does not go and make ready and then invite them in. He runs out to where they are standing.

You are not disqualified by a house, and the founding scene of the whole thing has never once happened indoors. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a beautiful passage back to the person it has been used against, and Genesis 18:2 has three men met at a tent door with no notice and nothing made ready.

And then read what he gives them. Water for their feet. Bread. A place to rest under a tree. He does not take them inside at all. The entire encounter that founds the whole biblical idea of hospitality happens at a threshold and under a tree.

Nobody in that scene goes into a house. Not one person.

You are not failing at the thing this passage describes, and Genesis 18:2 has never once put the founding act of hospitality inside a prepared room. It is written that he ran to meet them from the tent door and served them under a tree, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives that back to somebody who has been reading it as an accusation.

You have been measuring your convictions against a standard the founding text does not contain. The word puts the whole scene at a threshold with water and bread, and the Spirit of God is the one who removes a bar nobody in Scripture ever set.

Conviction is not measured by the room it happens in

Now let me deal with the wound directly, because it is the real subject.

There is a question underneath all of this, and it is whether being unable to do it means the belief was never real.

Here is what I would say to that. Belief that produces no action is dead. That is true and Scripture says it plainly and I am not going to soften it. But that is not what is happening in your house.

You have a conviction with no outlet, and that has never once been the same thing as a conviction nobody acts on. The written word puts the whole encounter at a threshold with bread and water, and the Spirit of God is the one who reads an ache correctly when the man carrying it cannot.

What is happening in your house is a conviction that has no available outlet. That is a different thing entirely from a conviction nobody acts on. A man in prison who believes in feeding the hungry and cannot is not a man with a dead faith.

And I will say the sharper thing, because it is true. The pain you feel about this gap is itself evidence. Nobody grieves the absence of a thing they do not believe in. The ache is the belief, showing itself in the only way currently available to it.

You are not a person whose faith is only words, and the ache about this has never once been anything other than the conviction itself. Genesis 18:2 has hospitality happening at a threshold with bread and water, and the Spirit of God is the one who reads an ache correctly when a person cannot read it themselves.

So tonight, one route and one chair. Not because it is a compromise. Because it is very close to the whole of what the founding scene describes.

You are permitted to practice this at a threshold tonight, and a threshold has never once been the small version of it. It is written that they were met at a tent door and served under a tree, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a hall cleared toward one chair.

Clear the path to the first chair

So here is the whole of what I am asking.

Start at your front door. Walk to the first chair somebody could sit in. That chair and that path are your tent door and your tree.

Move only what is on the way. Fifteen minutes and then stop.

Nobody has to be invited. Nobody has to come. The route is a preparation, and a preparation is a real act, and Abraham's preparation happened after the men were already standing there, which means yours is running ahead of his.

You are able to do this tonight, and doing it has never once required the rooms behind that chair to be dealt with. Genesis 18:2 puts the whole encounter at a threshold, and the Spirit of God is present in one cleared route and one chair.