SHOW HOSPITALITY, BE WELCOMING!
A Hospitable person is a welcoming person and a welcoming person is a hospitable person. One cannot be hospitable without being welcoming and one cannot be welcoming without being hospitable. Hospitality begins from the heart. Welcoming others begins from the mind. An open minded person is more likely to be welcoming and hospitable than a closed minded person. One of the best policies in life is to run an open door policy, to make yourself approachable and accessible to people, to make your home open to all.
Someone once said that Showing hospitality and being welcoming is a way of being a blessing to others and Another said that hospitality is something that needs to be practiced and valued especially in today’s hurting culture. How do you feel when you are told that you are not welcomed here. Everyone wants to feel welcomed and to be welcomed. It was Alexander Strauch in his book The Hospitality of Commands who said that Hospitality is love in action. It is the flesh and muscle on bones of love. There is also a book called “The Simplest ways to change the world” it says Anytime we practice hospitality, we follow in the footsteps of our lavishly hospitable God. The Christian Bible in Heb 13:2 reminds us that by welcoming Strangers, some have entertained angels unawares. Hospitality is an opportunity to show that we love and care.
The story goes back to the late 1880s. On cold, rainy night, an elderly couple walked into a small hotel in Philadelphia to shelter from the storm. The clerk, a young man, tried to accommodate the couple, but unfortunately the hotel was booked out. Not wanting to send them out into the rain and seeing no other alternative, he offered them his room for the night. “It’s not exactly a suite, but it will make you folks comfortable.” Hesitatingly, the couple took up his offer. After a night’s rest, the gentleman—while clearing the bill the next morning—told the clerk that he was touched by his gesture. He would be ideal to run the best hotel in the US, he said. “Maybe someday I’ll build one for you,” is what he is rumoured to have said.
Two years later, the clerk received a letter recounting that fateful night in Philadelphia, along with a ticket to New York. The elderly gentleman was William Waldorf Astor and he wanted the young clerk to manage his new hotel. George C. Boldt took the challenge up and the rest, as they say, is history
