Always The Host Never The Guest

Twenty years, and she cannot bring one to mind.

She tried, in February, properly, going back year by year. An evening in somebody else's house where she arrived with nothing, sat down, was handed something, and did not get up again until it was time to leave.

She got as far as a christening in another decade and stopped, because she was not sure about that one either.

She hosts. That is what she does and it is not a complaint and she is extremely good at it. Christmas, every year, twenty odd people. The thing after the funeral. The girls from work when one of them was in trouble. Two Sundays a month, easily, somebody is round.

And when she is invited somewhere, she goes, and she brings something, and she is in the kitchen within four minutes.

Not because anybody asks. She goes in on her own, with an empty plate that needs taking through, and then she is at the sink, and then she is finding the bin bags, and by half past nine she has done more work in that house than the woman who lives in it.

Everybody says how good she is.

What she worked out in February is that she has never once been in a room where nothing was expected of her, and that she is the one who arranged it that way, every single time, in about four minutes.

Rest yourselves under the tree

Sit down in that armchair a minute, because the most famous act of hospitality in the whole Bible starts with a sentence about getting somebody off their feet.

Abraham sees three travelers and runs to meet them, and before the calf and the cakes and the butter, before any of the enormous meal he is about to produce, this is what he says.

Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree.Genesis 18:4

Rest yourselves under the tree.

That is the opening move. Sit down. Stop walking. Let somebody bring you water.

And the whole passage only works because the three of them do it. They sit. They let him run about. They do not offer to help, they do not carry anything through, they do not find the bin bags, and there is no suggestion anywhere in the chapter that they should have.

Somebody has to be under the tree or the hospitality has nowhere to land.

Hear this in your own chair. You are not lazy for sitting down, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture opens the great act of welcome by putting three men off their feet, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has had you feeding this family and half that street for twenty years.

Now let me name what the four minutes are doing, because it is not pride and pride is the wrong word for a woman who does the thing after the funeral every time.

Being useful is a position, and it is a safe one.

While you are carrying a plate you have a reason to be in the room. Nobody is looking at you, nobody is asking you how you actually are, and you are not sitting still long enough for anything to come up. You know where you stand, because you are standing, and you have been standing for twenty years. The written word never once tied a welcome to a job, and the Holy Spirit has had you carrying plates for two decades without one complaint from Him.

Sitting in an armchair with a cup and nothing in your other hand is a completely different exposure and your body knows it, which is why you are up within four minutes without ever deciding to be.

Hear this too, and let it land in the front room. You have not been performing anything, and Scripture is what says so. What is written has the greatest host in the book begin by seating his guests, and the Spirit of God has never once required a woman to earn her place in a room she was invited into.

And nothing here says a home is more real than a Sunday morning, and nothing here is aimed at anybody who has nowhere to host. This one is for the woman who hosts everything and has not sat down in twenty years.