Today’s post in the series Hospitality: Opening Doorways to the Kingdom is written by Meredith
Griffin.
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I live a little over an hour’s drive from Lakewood Church, Joel Osteen’s mega-church that meets in a former sports arena in central Houston, Texas. Each Sunday, over 16,000 people attend the main campus, while thousands more attend satellite campuses and even millions more watch Osteen from their televisions in at least 100 different countries. Osteen’s first book, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential ranked #1 on The New York Times Best Seller List and sold over 4 million copies. What is Osteen’s message and what makes it so attractive to people all over the world?
Osteen promises we are due God’s blessing of success- safety, health, and wealth when we give our resources over to God. The message is prosperity gospel, which requires not only our financial resources, but a positive attitude, especially in the midst of hardship. Prosperity gospel claims healing when faith is strong enough. It focuses on our lives now as we wait in eager expectation for things to come together for us, where we finally get our big break, our chance to shine. Prosperity gospel is about today, rather than eternal life to come. It’s a promise of control and who wouldn’t like a little more control over their lives? An extension of prosperity gospel, I would argue, is vending machine gospel, as my husband likes to call it. Vending machine gospel uses the same principal. Like a vending machine, if I put my coins in (praying hard enough, tithing, or giving the last of my resources, for example), I am guaranteed my candy bar of safety, health, and wealth.
Where do Osteen and others like him get their idea that we can turn to God with an open hand after doing a little good? If preachers of prosperity or vending machine gospel look to scripture for examples, I admitthere are instances of God’s people prospering as a direct result of their hospitality. The story of the prophet Elijah and a widow come to mind. A generous widow shares the last of her flour and oil with Elijah who had been entrusted by God to warn King Ahab of a great famine in Israel. Ahab had introduced to his people Baal, a false god who was said to provide rain. God protects Elijah by commanding him to hide in a ravine, drinking from a brook near the Jordan river and eating meat and bread brought to him each morning and evening by ravens.
When the brook dries, God commands Elijah to find a widow to supply him with food. Elijah obeys and when he asks the widow for food, she shares with him that she was gathering a couple of sticks so that she could go home and prepare it for herself and her son, so that they “might eat it and die.” You can sense the desperation in the widow’s response. She was quick to bring Elijah a little water, but when he asked for the last of her food, she found herself afraid. I imagine the widow wasn’t thinking of herself, but of her son. How could she share her son’s last meal with an unkempt stranger from the wilderness? Elijah promises that if she shares with him, God will ensure that her “jar of flour will not be used up and [her] jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land.”
Following prosperity gospel’s logic in the case of Elijah and the widow, we seek opportunities to show hospitality; to share even the last of what we have because we too could be greatly rewarded like the widow. In fact, Elijah goes on to live with the widow and her son. Food is provided each day for the three of them for years to come. Later on, God even brings the widow’s son back to life when he falls ill and dies. Things worked out great for the widow, but how many of us want to raise our hands and share our own experience or the experience of watching another who was generous and hospitable, or who maybe prayed fervently for something, but who still suffered, despite their living (in the words of Osteen) their “best life now”?
At the age of 21, I took a semester off of school to try teaching in rural Tanzania. I saw the best life; a life of children playing under trees and not one neighbor going hungry. I also saw pain. It was estimated that over seventy percent of the people in Igoda and its surrounding villages had HIV or AIDS. One student in particular, Eliza, was known as caretaker to her sick, widowed mother who lived villages away. When I heard Eliza’s mother, or Mama Eliza as locals would call her, needed a blanket, I jumped at the chance. I bought a wool blanket the day before from a local shop and followed Eliza on her weekly journey to visit her mother. When we arrived, Mama Eliza demanded we rest ourselves inside her grass-roofed home. Her few possessions were arranged neatly on the dirt floor- a straw mat, a few spoons, knives, bowls, and a large woven basket.
After we gave Mama Eliza the blanket and had a few pleasant exchanges which exhausted my knowledge of the local language, Mama Eliza spoke firmly to her daughter, pointing to the woven basket. Eliza nodded and turned to me. “Teacher? My mother says that you must stay for dinner. My mother does not have much food. Her crop is not good right now. See in her basket? She has only a few potatoes and greens. But she will only be happy if she can share her crop with you.” I knew I could not refuse the meal because it would devastate Mama Eliza, but how could I eat the few calories her body so desperately needed? Then it occurred to me. Mama Eliza, the sick, poor widow, was giving the last of her food to be hospitable, to say thank you.
Mama Eliza was “living her best life now,” but was not given the same promise as the widow Elijah encountered. She was not motivated by safety, health, or wealth, but simply because it was what you do. When someone has traveled all day to bring you a gift, you invite them in and you feed them. You host. I do not know what became of Mama Eliza, but my guess is that she passed away years ago as she was without proper medication or care for her illness. I could not go on to live and provide for Eliza and her mother, much less bring anyone back to life like God empowered Elijah to do. Mama Eliza’s hospitality towards me was risky. Unlike the widow in 1 Kings and unlike the promises of prosperity gospel, Mama Eliza was probably without food in the following days because she had shared with me.
So why be hospitable?What’s in it for us if we might turn out like Mama Eliza- hungry and without? Perhaps it is in the act of hospitality itself, especially when it’s uncomfortable or even painful, that makes it worth it. Worth it, not because there is always a gain or because we feel good about ourselves afterwards, but worth it because we become more like Christ in the process. It’s worth it because we are shaped by our giving.
Christ showed us the ultimate act of hospitality when he came to the earth, our home, and lived as one of us. Christ extended his hospitality to the cross where he died despite his life of generosity, love, and miracles. Our life experiences show us that we are not guaranteed happiness, safety, health, or wealth when we are hospitable. Even when we give the very last of our resources, no matter how sacrificial or painful, we are not promised our time to shine or as the vending machine gospel would say, our candy bar. What we can count on; however, is knowing ourselves better and maybe even knowing Christ more intimately than before. Perhaps when Mama Eliza gave the last of her crop to a stranger, she was thinking of what Jesus says in Matthew, that whoever welcomes another is welcoming Christ himself. We are hospitable, not to be one step closer to success or to reap in the world at hand, but in the words of the Nicene Creed, we are hospitable so that we may better look to the life of the world to come.
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Meredith Griffin lives on Galveston Island in Texas. She enjoys spending time outdoors with her husband and two young children. She holds a Bachelors degree in English Literature and Education as well as a Masters in Counseling from the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest.
Tom and I have just been together with friends Chris and Naomi Lawrence in New York. One thing I discovered is that Naomi is a passionate yarn bomber. She has found this to be a wonderfully creative way to tie her floristry background to her art and sculpture.
I interviewed her during our recent trip and put together the following video presentation. Wish I was better at editing videos though. However I think you will get a good idea of this amazing gift that Naomi has.
Earlier this week I reposted this link to a video meditation called A Good Day by Brother. Its popularity encouraged me to post this video which is another beautiful meditation by Brother David Steidl-Rast accompanied by Gary Malkin’s inspired music, looks towards the possibility of our world uniting in an overflow of gratitude.
If you enjoyed this you might like to visit Gratefulness.org/ where you can find more of Brother Steidl-Rast’s meditations.
Have you ever wondered what air conditioning has to do with Christian faith? I’ts obviously not something that Jesus thought about so why should we get concerned? A couple of years ago, I read this fascinating article on conversation at Alternet about whether we can and should live without air conditioning. The article Air Conditioning is Terrible for the Earth – Here’s How To Live Without it is well worth a read and got me thinking about my faith and the unexpected responsibilities it places on me over the summer months.
We are just back from New York City. Yesterday the temperature was well into the nineties. And here in Seattle we are expecting 90s over the weekend, something that has Seattlites complaining about the heat and dashing out to buy fans and air conditioners. So it seems a good time to think about this.
This is not a topic that most Christians spend time thinking about. The Bible belt is the biggest offender when it comes to over use of air-conditioning. And many of you may think that because I live in the Pacific NW where the weather is rarely warm enough to bother with air conditioning, I have little to say. However I spent most of my life in Australia or working in the tropics – living on an unair-conditioned ship with a single fan wafting a few stray so I feel I am more of an expert than you would expect.
Sizzling summer temperatures have all of us thinking about how to keep cool. But as as the temperatures drop we often forget about it. After all when the temperatures are in the 80s we are not likely to overstress the electrical grid with our power usage. But then again summer is just beginning and according to the Alternet article:
The air-conditioning of America’s homes, businesses schools, and vehicles causes the release of greenhouse gases equivalent to 400 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. air conditioning
There are a number of ways to cut down the inside temperature of our houses without using energy intensive air conditioning as the Alternet article suggests – some simple, some not so simple. So let’s start with some of the simple ones first:
- Plant deciduous trees on the south side of the house in the northern hemisphere on the northern side of the house in southern hemisphere.
- If you are still waiting for those trees to grow close windows and curtains during the day in rooms that get direct sun; open windows and doors at night.
- Make sure roof and walls are well insulated. Seal gaps around windows and doors so that heat cannot enter.
- Move the air – use fans can decrease the temperature by 5 – 8 degrees and opening windows for flow through air will similarly reduce temperatures.
- Wear clothing made of materials that breathe – like cotton or wool (yes wool is warm in winter & cool in summer). Loose fitting garments are better than tight fitting. Also get rid of those shoes or wear sandals. Feet are good heat exchangers.
- Wet down your clothing with a spray bottle and stand in front of a fan, wear a wet hat or wipe down the back of your neck with a wet cloth.
- Drink plenty of water (not alcohol or sugar drinks)
- Turn off any unnecessary appliances. All electrical appliances generate heat; particularly refrigerators and TV’s. Plasma screens in particular are known to create a great deal of heat, to the point that some refer to them as space heaters. Other huge heat producers are clothes dryers and dishwashers so take advantage of the cool evenings to hang your clothes outside or put them on a drying rack in front of your fan and take advantage of the cooling flow of air.
- Replace your incandescent lights with LED bulbs.
- In dry climates, replace traditional air conditioning units with evaporative (swamp or desert) air conditioners.
- Retreat to the basement if you have one – it will be the coolest part of the house.
And now for some more challenging solutions:
- Build houses with lots of overhang – porches, verandas and eaves all make a difference in the heat
- Learn from the termites. Here is an amazing building design in Zimbabwe based on the air cooling system found in a termite hill.
- Build an underground house and cut do away with air conditioning costs.
- Put a green roof on your house
- Build on stilts. This increases air flow through the house though if you live in a place that gets cold in the winter this may not be very helpful.
- Get involved in your community and advocate for the replacing of asphalt with parks and green spaces. Cities absorb more solar energy during the day and are slower to release it after the sun sets, making for uncomfortable nights and no real relief from the heat. And because they haven’t cooled down as much overnight, mornings are warmer and the thermometer goes right back up when the sun starts beating down the next day. Green areas help keep the temperatures down.
I am sure that there are lots of other ideas that I have not thought of here so let me know – how do you keep cool in the hot weather?
The MSA Team, Board and a few close friends are in a process of discernment. The process we are using is called backcasting, which we combine with our usual discernment process to help us get a sense of what God is wanting to accomplish.
Our questions are: What could MSA look like in five years time? And then what do we need to do this year, next year, in 2016, 2017 2018 to accomplish that. Combining our usual discernment process with these questions is a very effective way to help us look forward and I thought that you would be interested in this and the way that we use this process. It has become such an essential part of who we are as an organization that we know it is part of what we want MSA to be in five years time. I think that it should be part of any discipleship process.
This is an exciting time that helps draw us closer to each other and to what God wants to accomplish in and through us. One of the wonderful aspects of this process is that it gives everyone involved both a sense of ownership and it draws us together as a team that is focused on Christ rather than on our own agendas. We see it as an opportunity to mentor each other and to integrate our spiritual practices with our work.
Using a process like this also helps to slow us down, something that many of us struggle with as we live in such a fast moving society, but we realize that slowing down is actually what we need more than anything else. To be honest as I reflected on this I realized that we are probably not wasting time at all – in the long run we are probably saving time. The more time we spend focusing on God and God’s agenda the more effectively we will be at doing things that have eternal value.
In this process we always start with a centering prayer, which I first learnt about when reading Basil Pennington’s book Centering Prayer. I often use a breathing prayer for this process which helps all of us relax and let go of all that distracts us from God.
Our second step is checking in. We ask each other. What were the high and low points of the last week? Where did you feel close and distant from God? We then ask What are you looking forward to in the week ahead? What are you not looking forward to? We find that asking these questions sensitizes us to each others joys and struggles so that when we get down to business we are aware of the pressures on each other’s lives and how these could impact our work and our decisions. And in case we are not taking each other seriously enough we then ask these question What are the common themes? and How could these impact our work in the season ahead?
Reflecting on where God is active and how God is moving in our personal lives first and using that as the foundation for our other work focuses us on relationships rather than tasks. It also strengthens our faith as we recognize the presence of God is all we do and take notice of the threads of God’s activity throughout the day. It is amazing how often what God wants to guide us into in our business flows out of this personal sharing time.
The next important step, which can be challenging as so easily move back into a secular business mode of operation, is to look at our business agenda in the same spirit of attentiveness, recentering as needed to keep us attentive to God’s spirit. Noticing the God moments and the flow of God’s spirit during the meeting and offering our efforts to God, bringing us back to the center is an important final step.
We appreciate your prayers and your encouragement as we work through this process.
A couple of days ago in my post Embracing the Wild Hospitality of God. I talked about how even the brambles and pests in our gardens can be unexpected blessings from God. Since then I have found myself thinking a lot about the aspects of my personality that I once thought of as curses that I now recognize as blessings.
For instance I have a photographic memory and absorb facts and figures like a sponge. My family found it embarrassing, my friends found it strange and men found me intimidating. I have lost count of the times I was told I thought like a man and not a woman. Often growing up I felt embarrassed, sometimes even ashamed of this aspect of my personality which so often kept me isolated and distanced from others. I tried to hide the uniqueness of who God had created me to be. It was very definitely a curse and not a blessing from my perspective.
Now I realize that so much I have accomplished in my life would have been impossible without that gift which I had for so long regarded as a curse. My ability to gather and process facts was really important as I developed the medical ministry for Mercy Ships. It has been just as important as I put together resource lists for this blog and even more important as I read and process the huge number of books I read every week. Even as I garden and write prayers and books, it is my memory and ability to retain and process facts and figures that has provided a platform for what I do.
Sometimes I feel that I suffer from verbal diarrhoea and that the quantity of what I process and write about is a little overwhelming for some. One of my friends jokingly told me one day that I need to develop a new blog – Godspace Light. But that no longer bothers me. I know that this is a gift that God has given me and I am grateful for it and humbled by the ways that God has used it to bless the lives of others.
What this makes me realize however is that all of us are blessed with gifts from God that we often begin seeing as curses. Maybe a disability like Tourette’s. Tom and I recently watched Front of the Class about a young teacher who has tourette’s syndrome. At the end of the film he too gives credit to his “curse” for being a wonderful gift in his life and making him all that God intends him to be.
Part of what prompted this post for me is talking to a friend of ours whose son has just been diagnosed as autistic. They were devastated, until they realized that the personality traits that labelled him as autistic are actually much sort after in high tech businesses.
Perhaps your curse is being born into poverty, of being abused as a child, or having an addiction to alcohol or drugs. These too God can redeem and transform into gifts that God can use to bring into being that new world of wholeness and abundance that God is in the process of bringing into being.
Even the curse of the tower of Babel and the confusion of languages, depicted in the photo above, was redeemed by God at pentecost. And what fascinates me is that God does not redeem it by making people all speak the same language, God redeems it by maintaining language diversity but makes it possible for people to understand each other, something that I am sure adds much more richness to the kingdom of God.
So what do you think? My challenge to you today is to spend time in prayer and allow the spirit of God to identify your curse. What is it in your life that God wants to redeem and transform into a gift? Or what in your life has God already redeemed that you have never come back to God with gratitude and thankfulness.
I wrote this prayer for the Light for the Journey Facebook page this week and find it keeps coming to mind as I watch the news that speaks of so much pain in the world. Pray it with me today.
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