Joyful Hospitality

Over the past weeks, Nathan and I have been talking & learning much about serving others. Hospitality & serving others is a characteristic that we pray & desire to be reflected in our family & home. Much learning goes along with that ~ making sure that we always guard our time for each other, time to read & study individually & as a couple, time to work. The Lord has been so gracious though, in giving us wisdom and understanding as we seek to honor & glorify Him in the area of time.
There is always a temptation to fall into self-centeredness in the area of our time ~ thinking we have too much on our plates, we're doing everything, etc.... But I would encourage us all to take a look at where & how we're spending our time & see what it is truly being spent on. When we are "so busy" we often neglect the area of hospitality & serving others. This should not be.
Whenever we host friends in our home, we are blessed. There are just such special & sweet times of chatting, playing games, cooking together & much laughter! Nathan and I cherish these times. There are many other opportunities and ways to serve others & show hospitality ~ the Lord has been teaching us much about that. We are thankful to be learning & are continuing to seek, by God's grace & guidance, to spend good time investing in hospitality. It's wonderful to learn together and it reminds us how blessed we are with the relationships we've cultivated & new relationships we're building.
I was encouraged & challenged this morning by reading this quote from John Piper I read on the "girltalk" blog which belongs to Carolyn Mahaney & her three daughters. I thought I would share:
“The joy of receiving God’s hospitality decays and dies if it doesn’t flourish in our own hospitality to others,” warns John Piper. But when we practice hospitality:

“…we experience the refreshing joy of becoming conduits of God's hospitality rather than being self-decaying cul-de-sacs….” [W]e experience the thrill of feeling God's power conquer our fears and our stinginess and all the psychological gravity of our self-centeredness. And there are few joys, if any, greater than the joy of experiencing the liberating power of God's hospitality making us a new and radically different kind of people, who love to reflect the glory of his grace as we extend it to others in all kinds of hospitality.”