Hosting on Empty
One
Elijah and the Widow
Do you remember the story of Elijah and the Widow? The Prophet Elijah is running for his life from the wicked King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. He’s trying to find a place he can lay low, trying to find room and board where he can just survive for a while. He comes to the house of a widow who lives with just her son. Now there’s a famine on. Elijah asks for some water, and then almost as an afterthought, he adds, “Oh, and would you bring me some bread to go with it?”
Then the widow turns to him and tells him the situation: there’s no food in the house. She’s got a tiny bit of flower, and a tiny bit of oil. When Elijah showed up, she was just gathering some sticks so she could make a fire, bake a tiny loaf, then she and her son would eat that. And after that, she says, “We will die.”
She’s very sorry, she says. She doesn’t have the resources right now to share a meal with anybody else. She doesn’t even have enough for her own family. You’d think there wouldn’t be any answer to that. You’d think there’d be nothing more to say. But it turned out that Elijah did have an answer.
Two
The Generosity of God in response to Human Generosity
Elijah, even after hearing of the plight of the widow and her son, remained undaunted. Unbelievably, he doubles down. He tells the widow to make some bread for him first, then to make a loaf for herself and her son. And then he declares, “For thus says the Lord of Israel: the jar of flour will not be used up, and the jug of oil will not run dry.”
He guarantees, in God’s name, that their radical generosity to him will be repaid with even more radical generosity from God. And that’s how it plays out.
That widow thought she just had one meal left. But by being generous to someone for God’s sake, she won for herself many, many more meals for herself and for her son. For years, flour and the oil miraculously held out. They were never spent. And Elijah and the widow and her son survived the famine.
Three
Why Do We Not Welcome More People to Our Table in God’s Name?
There are all kinds of practical applications we could draw from this story. All kinds of cases where we don’t want to be generous – but if we are, God will repay our generosity many times over. But for now, let’s make a very obvious and straightforward application
The widow and her child were blessed because, even though she didn’t want to share their table with anyone, she did, out of mercy and trust in God. Now the truth is, a lot of us almost never invite anyone over to share our table. Many of us simply aren’t generous with hospitality. Now in the case of the widow, her reasons for hesitation were obvious. She and her boy were on the brink of raw starvation. But that’s not our reason. Most of us aren’t worried as much about starvation as about being overweight. Most of us throw away tons of food.
So it’s not that we don’t think there’s enough food that keeps us from sharing our table with outsiders. It must be something else. There must be something else we don’t think we have enough of. What is it? What is that thing we don’t feel like we have enough of? What is the perceived lack of resources that prevents us from being hospitable?
Four
What Do We Feel We Don’t Have Enough Of?
Hospitality may not require that much from us economically anymore, but it does require certain things that we’re often too insecure to give up.
For instance, hospitality requires time and we may feel like we don’t have enough of that already. We don’t have enough time for ourselves or our family, let alone guests. Hospitality requires that we actually provide food and we may feel like we don’t have enough cooking ability, or we may feel too embarrassed to order out. We don’t feel like we have the wherewithal to give our own family good food, let alone guests.
Hospitality requires that we try to keep the conversation going and we may feel like we’re not good at that anyway. We can hardly think of what to say to our own family, let alone guests.
Hospitality requires energy for cleanup, before and after, and we may feel like we don’t have enough energy to get the normal dishes done, let alone dishes for guests. And so we’re like the widow to Elijah. We refuse to be hospitable because we don’t think we have enough resources for ourselves, let alone for someone else.
No, we’re not afraid we’re going to starve but we are afraid we’re going to be overwhelmed. And what do you think the Lord’s response to us would be?
Five
Trusting that God’s Generosity will Exceed Yours
Not only did it turn out that the widow was able to be hospitable and still survive, it turned out that her hospitality was what allowed her and her family to thrive beyond anything she might have imagined. So why would you think it’d be different for you?
Invite people over, in the Lord’s name. The food situation worked out for the widow, it’ll work out for you. All she offered in God’s name was some bread. I’m sure whatever you offer your guests, it won’t be less than that. Other people bring their own topics of conversation with them, and afterwards, they leave your family with more to talk about than it had originally. So, as Jesus said in a different context, “Do not be anxious about what you are to say.”
Nobody cares how clean your house is, and anyway, having people over is a good motivation to clean every so often. And time? Just as food is fundamentally for eating, so time is fundamentally for spending with other people. In which case, the issue isn’t that you don’t have enough time, the issue is that you don’t have enough people in your life to spend time with!
God will always be generous but he needs us to be generous first. Find someone who would benefit from having dinner and prayer at your house. Invite them over, and trust in God. He will bless you.