Hospitality {matul}

Before I started the MATUL program last September, I heard a sermon about hospitality. This preacher mentioned that, in America, we often misunderstand the true nature of this word. But if you look at the word itself you might be able to grasp a slightly fuller understanding. Within the word HOSPITALITY is the word HOSPITAL. We go to hospitals for healing, to be made well again. This is what Christian hospitality is to look like.

I've had to learn a lot about hospitality since being here in Brazil. People are constantly inviting you over for lunch and welcoming you into their home. To refuse is highly offensive. And while it is wonderful to be forming relationships and getting to know people and being welcomed as family, there is so much more to hospitality.

Hospitality is more than welcoming someone into your dwelling. It is welcoming them into a place that is healing and life giving. Since being in Brazil, hospitality hasn't been quite what I expected. It's more than the hugs and kisses exchanged or the meals we've shared at other's tables. It's not even, necessarily, the home and family with whom I've taken up residence. For me, right now, it looks like the grace that's extended when I butcher the language in my attempts to communicate. Those who speak slowly and are willing to repeat themselves, who seem to work just as hard to understand and convey a message as I do.

I call it grace and hospitality because it can be nothing else. It refreshes and heals my soul, when the only thing I've earned here is the label of "crazy" for moving to a country where I don't know the language. I'm the one who chose this; communicating should be hard work for me. But these people, full of grace and hospitality, with a character that reminds me of Jesus, have willingly entered into my world of strained communication. They, with each word, communicate to me an abundance of grace and worth and love.

Photo Credit: Alicia Nelson