Toward Sunday.

     Christine Pohl writes, “When we offer hospitality, our faults as well as our possessions are open to scrutiny. If we need to hide either, we are unlikely to offer much hospitality. Hospitality to strangers . . . has a way of laying bare our lives and surfacing our inadequacies. . .  Hospitality requires a dynamic mix of honest assessments of adequacy, need, and God’s sufficiency. . . .Hosts must also be able to move through their own brokenness in order to welcome others” (Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, 118).

     Christine Pohl writes, “The most transformative expressions of hospitality are associated with hosts whose social and economic status is unstable, who live on the edges of their society, or who lack clearly defined roles in the important institutions of life” (Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, 106-112).

     “Like Jesus, the best hosts are not completely ‘at home’ themselves, but still make a place of welcome for others” (Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, 119). Imagine how a more marginal position helped Christians to be more sensitive to the needs of strangers. How might the marginality of hosts affect the nature of the relationship with needy guests?

     In offering hospitality to strangers, bridge or threshold people are very important. “Such persons understand both the world of the stranger and the world of the welcoming community” (MR, 95). Who are “bridge people” in your community of faith? Why are they good at moving between both worlds?