This Is What Faithful People Do

This week, my family will sit around the table together for the first time in months. Only a mother with a mostly empty nest understands the tenderness of this statement.

My kids are almost entirely grown up and this old parenting blog remains idle much of the time until I have something new to say. It seems like I’m the kid these days, learning what comes next.

There are so many things I want to tell you about what God is teaching me right now: how leading with a limp will make you grow, how aging is surprising, how marriage humbles me, how parenting young adults is fun and hard and how ready and afraid I am to step into a role I’ve been preparing for the past decade.

Slowly, the words will spill out and find their place…

But for today, just a short simple truth that demands reminding: The holidays are here and there’s a beautiful opportunity Jesus has given us — a mark of our faithfulness is hospitality to others.

As my kids leave and come back home, I’ve been reminded what hospitality means to them, to me, and how the Gospel really does come with a house key.

The extra chair at your table, the empty seat in your van, the more-than-enough-food in your pantry? Fill it.

This is what faithful people do: they sit with people, they invite them over, they push back a chair, they lean in and listen.

The world is at its darkest, mental health is on the brink, people are lonely, a little lost and out of an overflow of what Jesus has done for us, we do for others.

This is what faithful people do.

It’s not about checking off a spiritual box of good works, it’s about being so dazzled by Jesus that we can’t not serve others.

“Radically ordinary hospitality shows this skeptical, post-Christian world what authentic Christianity looks like,” Rosaria Butterfield said. “Those who live out radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not as theirs at all but as God’s gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom. They open doors; they seek out the underprivileged. They know that the gospel comes with a house key.”

An outflow of faithfulness to God  looks like hospitality to others.

We don’t have to be an extrovert, the perfect hostess or even a good cook, we just have to open the door.

This week, everyone is coming home… family, new and old and I will have more people then beds, more bodies than chairs, and it will be good.

Fill your couch. Fluff a pillow. Find someone hoping for an invitation and learn how you need them more than they need you.

This is what faithful people do.