Hospitality: Making Room for Another

There is a difference between entertaining and hospitality.

Entertaining often begins with a question like, Is everything ready? Is the house clean? Is there enough food? Will everyone have a good time?

Hospitality begins somewhere else:

Is there room for you here?

Christian hospitality is the practice of making room for another person because God has made room for us. Sometimes that room is around our table. Sometimes it is in our schedule, our conversation, our attention, or the empty chair beside us.

Hospitality does not require a beautiful home, a complicated meal, or parents who enjoy hosting parties. It is a way of saying with our lives:

You are welcome here. You matter. There is room for you among us.

For families, hospitality can become one of the most ordinary ways children learn what the love of God feels like.

The Longing Beneath Hospitality

Hospitality grows from a longing to share our lives.

Jesus repeatedly made space for people. He ate with people others avoided. He welcomed children when his disciples considered them interruptions. He allowed strangers, friends, outsiders, and people carrying complicated stories to come close.

Hospitality asks us to notice the boundaries we naturally draw around our lives.

Who gets invited in?

Who feels comfortable around us?

Whose presence feels inconvenient?

Who might be standing near the edge?

Hospitality does not mean having no boundaries. Healthy hospitality actually needs them. It means that within the life God has given us, we intentionally make room for others.

Sometimes the most important hospitality is not opening the front door.

It is opening our attention.

Hospitality with Children

Children are wonderfully capable of hospitality.

They may notice the child standing alone before adults do. They can offer someone a chair, explain how a game works, share a toy, bring a glass of water, or ask a newcomer, “Do you want to sit with us?”

These small gestures matter.

Children learn hospitality not primarily because adults explain it, but because they experience what happens when a family begins asking:

Who could we make room for?

Rather than making hospitality another assignment for children, invite them into the wondering.

You might ask:

• Who have we not seen for a while?

• Is there someone who might enjoy eating with us?

• Who seems lonely lately?

• Is there someone new at church or school?

• What could help someone feel welcome in our home?

Then listen.

Children may notice people adults have overlooked.

Try It This Week: The Empty Chair

At one meal this week, notice an empty chair at your table.

If there isn't one, imagine adding one.

Ask:

“I wonder who could sit here?”

Let everyone name possibilities.

It might be:

• a neighbor

• a grandparent

• another family

• someone new at church

• a child from school

• someone who lives alone

• someone going through a difficult season

Choose one person or family.

Then decide on one small act of hospitality.

It does not have to be dinner.

You could invite someone for ice cream, meet at a playground, bring muffins to a neighbor, ask someone to join you after church, send a message saying “We were thinking about you,” or simply sit beside someone you do not usually sit beside.

Keep it simple enough that you are likely to actually do it.

Hospitality becomes a spiritual practice through repetition, not grandeur.

For Younger Children

Give children a concrete role.

They might:

• make a welcome sign

• choose a snack

• set out cups

• draw a picture for your guest

• greet someone at the door

• show another child where toys or books are kept

Before your guest arrives, say:

“Our job isn't to make everything perfect. Our job is to help them know there is room for them here.”

For Older Children and Teens

Invite them into the decision itself.

Ask:

“Who do you notice who could use a little more welcome right now?”

Their answer may surprise you.

You might also talk about hospitality beyond the home. Who gets welcomed into a lunch table, group chat, team, youth group, or circle of friends?

Hospitality sometimes means moving over.

Sometimes it means noticing who has never been invited.

Wonder Together

Afterward, resist the temptation to evaluate whether the hospitality “worked.”

Instead, wonder together.

• What did you notice?

• When did our guest seem most comfortable?

• Was anything awkward?

• What did you enjoy?

• Did you notice God anywhere?

• Did making room for someone change the way our family felt?

There does not need to be a lesson at the end.

Simply noticing is enough.

When Hospitality Is Difficult

Hospitality can reveal things in us.

We may discover that we like privacy more than we realized. We may worry about our house, our children's behavior, our cooking, or what another person thinks of us.

We may discover that some people are simply difficult for us to welcome.

Those discoveries are not failures.

They are part of the practice.

Hospitality gives God access to places in us that might otherwise remain hidden: our fear of inconvenience, our need for control, our preference for people who are already familiar to us.

We can bring those things honestly to God.

A Family Prayer

God of the open table,

thank you for making room for us.

Give us eyes to notice who is near us, who is new, who is lonely, and who may need welcome.

Teach us to make room in our home, in our time, and in our hearts.

May the people who encounter our family catch a glimpse of your welcome.

Amen.

A Simple Family Blessing

Before guests arrive, or as your family leaves home, place your hands open in front of you.

One person says:

God has made room for us.

Everyone responds:

Help us make room for others.

Then go.

Hospitality can begin with something as small as an open hand, an empty chair, and the willingness to notice who might belong there.

Going Further