13 Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
We live in a society that works long hours. We live in a society that is very busy. Those that work outside of the home, even in our city (or maybe especially in our city), work way more than 40 hours a week to feed their families. This is a difficult culture and society to live in because of that. Those that do work from home or stay home are busy running children from event to event and activity to activity. The question arises in the church: Who has time for hospitality? Who has time to build church relationships within their hectic lives? We get that. Church is busy, and people are working many hours, and current schedules make things difficult for people in the church. And when we see that imperative (command) to practice hospitality, it becomes difficult for families and individuals to set aside time to do that.
There was a time in which the church, despite busy schedules, practiced hospitality. Because Jesus commands hospitality from His church. In one book that I read on hospitality called Meditations on Friendship and Hospitality, the author says:
“We once expected kind Christian treatment as a matter of course, and we usually got it. We would have been shocked not to receive it. Today the world is very different, and whenever someone happens to receive kindness from a stranger, he is amazed. “
You see, things have been flipped on their head as hospitality is no longer part of the normal activity of the church. So what is at the heart of these struggles in the church to practice hospitality? Another author who writes on hospitality says:
At heart, we are all selfish, and selfishness is the single greatest enemy to hospitality. We do not want to be inconvenienced. We do not want to share our privacy or time with others. We are consumed with our personal comforts. We want to be free to go about our business without interference or concern for other people’s needs. We don’t want the responsibility and work that hospitality entails. We are greedy and don’t want to share our food, home, or money.1
Nathan Eshelman
9 Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.