For years, we have had children and adults roaming our house who do not share our last name. We have adopted the ancient ritual of feeding people, and they, in turn, have invested in feeding us when they bring some of their delicacies. The entire exchange is glorious and delicious.
We have folks weekly for psalms and dessert, and then we have our share of friends and guests staying with us overnight or having meals with us. Eggs, chips and dip, toast, butter, coffee, casseroles, pizza, whiskey, beer, soups, and none of those things in that exact order. The whole thing is a glorious mess of humans and food, the kind of mess that makes the kingdom of God glorious. We love the entire process, which creates a sense of normalcy that is utterly uncomfortable in our culture.
The discomfort stems from a sense of unrealistic neatness that keeps the world from being hospitable. Many evangelicals have fallen into similar traps. Christians wish they had more hospitality, but they do not believe it is sustainable if they have a steady number of guests in their homes.
Our general policy is that we clean when guests come over, which means we clean often, and with our eager tribe of children, cleaning is much more effective, especially with Sargent Wifey.
But the expectation–one I am constantly adjusting to as a Latin man who grew up with impeccable clean homes–that things must always be a certain way and that the home must maintain the correct Asian procedural methods of a certain short lady (how racist of me!) is utterly unrealistic and squashes the culture of hospitality.
The reality is that a home without guests doth not spark joy in the kingdom. Of course, I am not suggesting we forsake those cleanliness habits, but I do suggest we loosen our commitment to certain habits as prerequisites for hospitality.
Think of how many opportunities have been missed because we assumed that such and such a person would look down on us if they saw our house a certain way, the clothes on the couch, the boys’ room in utter chaos, etc.? How many opportunities have been ruined for sweet and intimate communion because we are not “spontaneous” kind of people?
Two additional footnotes are important in this discussion. The first is that if dads are not invested in the cleaning, let their steaks burn a thousand deaths. And the second is that there are seasons when such things need to be paused temporarily. Discernment must come in handy.
I remember a time many years ago when I was having a conversation with a young family with two little kids. The conversation was about our church’s focus on hospitality, to which the father replied: “One day, we will have time for that.” Now, I was quite a young pastor in those days, and my boldness was low on the Richter scale, but today I would simply say, “If you wait for the right time when the “right” time comes, it will always feel like the wrong time.” That’s the case because hospitality is built on the foundation of crying babies and broken toys. It’s a gift you learn to give others with plenty of practice.
Sometimes, when I am in the middle of a deep thought concerning the ontological Trinity with my guests, while 15 kids run around us and in the middle of a very “important” point I was trying to make, my littlest one interrupted with an urgent call from nature. I commented that parents have conversations in fragments in such settings. That should be absolutely normal and expected.
The entire stage and adaptation to such scenarios set the stage for even greater hospitality in the future. You can tell that the families that thrive in the hospitality department didn’t simply start to host when their kids turned 12, but they learned the art of hospitality when their kids were 12 days old. They did it, and they still do it, and their children will continue to do it.
In fact, the glorious thing about the messiness of houses and toy rooms and unfinished house projects is that it reflects the ongoing growth of the kingdom of God filled with messy humans, broken rooms, and unfinished discipleship programs for civilization. But we can’t wait until the eschaton comes to begin practicing kingdom habits; we practice them as the very means for kingdom growth.
