God calls us to practice hospitality as a daily way of life, not as an occasional activity when time and finance allow. Radically ordinary hospitality means this: God promises to put the lonely in families (Ps. 68:6), and he intends to use your house as living proof.
~Rosaria Butterfield, “The Gospel Comes With a House Key”
In each of our three homes, hospitality takes on a different hue. Because our family’s daily rhythms run so differently from our neighbors in Marulaon (we are much more “early to bed, early to rise”, and we eat at very different times), we don’t tend to host meals in our home here. For a while, that made me sad. Then I began to observe the many opportunities God was already giving us to extend nurture to our community. We’ve been back in the village for just over a week, and we’ve already galloped down these roads of hospitality:
---Sharing a loaf of cinnamon swirl bread with the District Priest’s family as a nod to their ministry and service to the church and community.
---Bandaging a wound the size of a half dollar and sending the young man away with soap, another bandage, and prayers.
---Saying thank you to Hensi for his help in getting the water tank on top of the house by giving him a loaf of banana bread with local ngali nuts inside. And watching his two smallest children while he and Aaron worked together.
---Providing a young mama with some Tylenol and prayers, then walking around the village holding her precious three month old to give her a little break.
---Setting aside a little bit of our lunch of curried, milked pumpkin greens and fish and popping a couple of cassava “hash browns” on top to share with one of my friends who has been a little bit down lately.
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