“May the Lord send you help from the sanctuary,
and give you support from Zion.” Psalm 20:2
I am on a mattress in the upstairs of a rustic bunkhouse open as a hiker hostel on the property of Holy Family Catholic Church in Pearisburg, VA. This hostel is a sanctuary of help and support. Hot showers, towels, a kitchen with food supplies, nearby restaurants, laundromat, post office….what more can a backpacker need? Volunteers from the congregation keep the hostel stocked and cart off trash; hiker guests help pick up and offer donations. Somehow hospitality is contagious and gets passed along in the name of Christ. More than once during this stay I thought of the holy family (for which this church was named), Mary and Joseph who fled Bethlehem with the child Jesus to seek asylum in Egypt and escape the murderous Herod. I wonder who offered hospitality to them in their exhausting travels. Was there a bunkhouse, a cave, a caravan? Years later Jesus grew up to offer hospitality to both sick and outcast. One day he fed 5000 hungry people who had traveled out to his wilderness retreat just to be near him. Hikers who received a night’s shelter from the Holy Family hostel became friends, shared food, stories, information and rides. I lent out my car to strangers that night as we all were drawn into the giving and receiving of hospitality. The Lord’s hospitality is contagious and continues in strange, unexpected ways.
Suggestions:
1. Take this verse with you and ponder its meaning for you throughout the day. What do you notice? What do you wonder? (Clicking on photo enlarges it.) Tell someone a story about a time when you received hospitality.
2. Or read all of Psalm 20 to discover how this verse fits into the psalm.
3. Or comment with a photo of your own that illustrates this verse’s meaning for you.
Tomorrow’s verse: Psalm 21:3-4
Starting January 1, 2016, for 150 days I am posting a daily psalm verse with a photo that is a visual meditation on the text for me. Each day a verse from the next psalm is chosen until all 150 psalms have been featured. To participate you may subscribe to my blog at https://elainedent.net or “friend” me on Facebook and watch for the daily links to blog posts. Disclaimer: I am not a photographer and most of the photos are from a cell phone or small camera while hiking the Appalachian Trail or the C&O Canal/Great Allegheny Passage Trail.
Chuck Miller says
You’ve started me thinking a lot about hospitality and why it has become uncommon in our society, certainly uncommon in comparison to some other cultures particularly those where there is less to go around. My own “privilege” hinders true hospitality. It seems that whether hospitality is as involved as taking in a refugee family or as simple as a greeting while passing on the sidewalk, hospitality involves a leveling of the playing field, whether by (sometimes sacrificially) giving, or maybe receiving (as we are hospitable to a child when receiving their gift of dandelions). Either way, there is an entering into, incarnation, or sharing of our lives and ourselves. How great was Christ’s love in emptying himself in order to enter my life and give me a true refuge in him. I hope we are all able to experience hospitality (whether given or received – “shared” is more appropriate) as an expression and celebration of God’s hospitality from Zion.
Elaine says
Thank you for your insightful comment, Chuck. I hadn’t thought of hospitality as incarnation, as an entering into, but it is, of course, as you point out. So sometimes entering into a space is as much a practice of hospitality as receiving another into one’s space.