Open-Hearted and Open-Handed
Blinking several times as we emerged into the bright noonday sun, Samantha and I were contemplative as we processed the meeting we’d just had with a printer and the myriad details we’d learned about printing the international cookbook Sam had been dreaming about for months.
My friend Sam is first and foremost a bridge-builder. She and her husband Andrew moved to the area to work with the community’s burgeoning refugee and immigrant population, and her idea for a multicultural community cookbook—the proceeds of which would benefit a refugee-related ministry—had been set in motion a couple of months earlier. Each recipe would include photos and an interview with the home cook, who would share a bit of her heritage and culture. I’d joined the project to write the interviews but had also agreed to help sort out the printing. After the initial planning meeting, a small group of women began putting the plan in motion.
Sam’s dream was big, and though I admired her vision, part of me wondered if it could be accomplished. The printing costs were astronomical. All of the cooks, photographers, writers, and editors would be unpaid volunteers. And in an area of the state that struggled to embrace a diversifying population, would such a vision even be welcome?
As I drove out of the printing press parking lot that day, I prayed for wisdom and hope. And I prayed that I could support my friend in helping her dream become a reality. Though the cookbook would only be made up of pages, words, and photos, it was a tangible representation of the community and the friendships being built.
Just two months later, as Sam’s dream was coming to fruition, I swallowed the lump in my throat, unshed tears in my eyes as I looked around at the collection of women filling Sam’s kitchen and spilling over into the dining and living areas. The aroma of spices from around the globe filled her home as women from Somalia, China, Iraq, Mexico, India, and the United States worked alongside one another in common purpose, conversing about one another’s dishes. I spotted biyani, mao po tofu, dolmas, and sambusa as photographers snapped artful pictures, capturing the food, the women, and the camaraderie unfolding around them. It was glorious chaos, full of children darting into and around the room before being shooed back outside to play.
Together, the women worked to create a few dishes. The dumplings, overseen by Carmen and her mother, who was visiting from China, were a particular favorite. The duo patiently let everyone take a turn creating them, handing out small circles of dough to be filled and crimped on the edges. Carmen’s mother demonstrated the technique a few times and pressed the edges together perfectly. My own efforts were wobbly, but she remained encouraging.
As the photographers finished and the interviews were completed, everyone present joined at the table to dive into the delicious array. It was community as God meant it to be—women sharing a veritable feast of the most delicious food, plates heaping high as we tried a bit of everything, exclaiming over similarities and differences, tentative friendships forming between women who would never have otherwise crossed paths.
The open-hearted and open-handed community demonstrated that day echoes the kind of love Jesus demonstrates to us, his children. I love how The Message puts it: “We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us” (Rom. 5:2). Our hospitality, our love and concern for others, is simply a reflection of what God has already done for us.
Some of the deepest conversations about faith and dreams and community are only made possible through living an open-door life where friendship comes first and our expectations come second. In friendship, Jesus can be reflected, not in a communion cup or the lyrics of a hymn, but in the faces of his followers—the church—loving their neighbors as well as they love themselves.
Living open-hearted and open-handed can be as simple as learning the names of your neighbors and inviting them to a backyard bonfire, or intentionally remembering the names of other parents seated on the sidelines of sporting activities. It’s learning to live with our spiritual eyes open, prayerfully asking God who he is sending us to in the places and spaces we already inhabit, allowing relationships to develop into genuine friendships as we trust God’s timing on deeper conversations over spiritual topics. It’s allowing others to live alongside us, observing (even imperfectly) what it looks like to be someone who loves Jesus and loves others before we say the words, knowing that how we walk out our faith is often more important than the words we profess.
Take a moment to ask God who he is sending you to in your already established rhythms of life. Is there a name or names that immediately come to mind? How might you invite them into your circles?
are Central Minnesota authors known collectively online as The Ruth Experience. In total, they are mom to seven kids between the ages of 7 and 30. They believe in the immense power of authentic community and of intentionally living faith out loud through kindness and friendship. They have several published books, including One Year Daily Acts of Friendship: 365 Days to Finding, Keeping, and Loving Your Friends and the newly released 100 Daily Acts of Friendship for Girls: A Devotional.
Photograph © Priscilla Du Preez, used with permission
