Loving Earnestly and Well

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. (1 Peter 4:8–9 ESV)

Every time I hear the phrase “welcome at the table,” I immediately picture my cafeteria lunch tables in high school. I was welcome at three different tables—the band nerds’ table, my guy friends’ half of a table, and my future college roommate and her sister’s end of a table. I wouldn’t have dared tried to sit anywhere besides those three zones of comfort, lest the Regina George types at my school feel the need to put me in my place that day.

The best comedy always works because it contains an element of truth. This is why we find movies like Mean Girls and Bad Moms so hilarious. Our lives are that necessary element of truth we find so endearing and entertaining.

These films are relatable and funny because they offer exaggerations of our real, painful, and humiliating human experiences of rejection as young women. These fictional stories make us feel okay about and able to laugh in harmony at one of our greatest fears.

As humans built for community, we constantly crave hospitality, because we look for comfort and safety from birth. We instinctively gravitate toward people, specifically other women, who are kind, welcoming, friendly, and warm. We like people who immediately make us feel at ease, and we tend to avoid or dislike people who don’t.

Abrasive and critical is an incredibly hard sell in developing personal relationships. Women are sick and tired of being judged by other women, and yet we continue to do it. We hold ourselves to the standard of “perfect at everything” and then automatically extend that unattainable standard to everyone around us—our friends, our neighbors, our business partners or clients, our relatives, our children, our significant others, our pastors, our hairstylists, and our kids’ teachers.

We even extend that unattainable standard to strangers, like our waiters or cashiers or celebrities on the internet. How nice.

In her new book, Cozy Minimalist Home, Myquillyn Smith—better known on social media as “The Nester”—says the recently popular Danish art of hygge (pronounced hue-guh) isn’t simply a personal decorating style. Hygge requires community.

Hygge is not about making your home comfortable for yourself or even for your own family; it’s about making both you and all the people who enter your home and your life feel comfortable and at ease. It’s about hospitality. It’s about loving your neighbors in your community well.

When we let go of perfection in ourselves and strive instead for presence and contentment in our own lives, we allow ourselves to let go of perfection and strive for presence and contentment in our relationships with others. When we forgive ourselves for not being flawless and picture perfect, we can begin to forgive others and provide a comfortable, safe space for them too.

Maybe this means keeping premade cookie dough in your freezer or vacuuming the dog hair off your floor a few times a week. Maybe it means leaving open space in your weekly schedule to pray for and commune with others or to meet tangible needs that may arise. Maybe it means not criticizing someone for a choice they made even though you don’t fully understand it.

Extending hospitality means loving others without expectation or complaint, even when we don’t yet know if they’re likable. It means allowing others to feel comfortable and welcome at our tables and in our lives.

Father, thank you for pushing us out of our comfort zones to create comfort for others. Please help us to love others well and build relationships with those we dislike or simply don’t understand. Help us identify the people we’re leaving out or not welcoming to our table. Amen.

 

Scripture for Reflection

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:2 ESV)

Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. (Romans 12:10–13 ESV)

Reach for More

How can you extend hospitality to both friends and strangers this week? How are you providing a comfortable, safe space for others in your home and in your life?

Lauren Flake writes about her journey as a wife, mom to two little girls and Alzheimer’s daughter in her native Austin, Texas, at For the Love of Dixie. Her first book, Where Did My Sweet Grandma Go? was published in 2016. She thrives on green tea, Tex-Mex, and all things turquoise.

Photograph © Priscella Du Preez, used with permission