Book Review 1: Practicing Hospitality

As I previously mentioned, I have a book list for this upcoming year. One of those books is called Practicing Hospitality, by Pat Ennis and Lisa Tatlock, which is one I received from Tim for a Christmas gift. This book was very helpful because I’m very much the type of person who likes to have concrete examples for abstract ideas, and their book is full of them!! Probably one of the most helpful things for me personally was how the authors explain the difference between entertaining and biblical hospitality…something I think we often confuse. Here’s a paragraph explaining the difference:

“Hospitality is a practical way to love others. Therefore, a person practicing biblical hospitality should also be a loving person. This element separates biblical hospitality from social entertaining or even distinguishes between the hospitality of a believer and unbeliever. Believers can uniquely display God’s love as they extend hospitality. Entertaining focuses on having a beautiful table décor or preparing gourmet food. Biblical hospitality is a demonstration of love. Food and other elements are merely tools used to express our love for people. Our motivation for being hospitable women is a response to God’s work in our lives. Hospitality is one way we can tangibly demonstrate our love for God.” (p. 50)

One very practical suggestion they offered was to spend time in prayer before opening your home to others. Ask God to work in the time you’re about to spent with others that the conversation would be edifying and encouraging.

The most helpful chapter was the one that discussed the need to extend hospitality first to your own family, and then to extend hospitality to others. After Wesley was born, I found the transition to life with two kids an extremely challenging one. Compared to Micah, Wesley was a more difficult and needy baby. I won’t go into all of it. And with the close ages of the two boys, Micah still needed a lot of attention, especially in the discipline department. Needless to say, I went through many days feeling like I did a horrible job taking care of the family and home…so how could I invite people into my home when I couldn’t even do an adequate job caring for my own family? This was the tension I felt for quite some time, so I was thankful that they addressed this. The authors talked about how when you’re in certain seasons of life you may not be able to show hospitality to others quite as often, and you may need to find ways to creatively show hospitality. The authors suggest partnering with your husband in hospitality, because he “can give you counsel and direction regarding how much time you can dedicate to hospitality.” I found this to be so freeing, because they continue by saying that “The protection of working under the authority of your husband is a blessing, since he knows your physical limitations, work or ministry responsibilities and unique family characteristics.” I am so glad that Tim is my protector in all areas…including hospitality!

There’s just so much more that I could include, but I’ll leave just one more thought from the book. Often we get the idea that hospitality is only having people into our home for a meal. We don’t think outside of the box or see that showing hospitality is not limited to this! When it comes down to it, what is hospitality? Demonstrating our love for God by showing love to others and meeting needs. Some ideas the authors gave included visiting someone in the hospital, a shut-in, bringing a meal to help a family out, having people over for games, meeting up with a friend for coffee. This book was not only challenging, but it helped me to redefine my understanding of hospitality, giving me a more precise, biblical understanding of hospitality, that I can use to apply as our seasons of life continue to change. Like I said, there is so much more that I learned and want to write about, but I’ll stop here…for now anyway, and say that I highly recommend this book!

And I couldn't do a post without a picture of these guys!