Solitude and Hospitality

Betty Hollister shares her thoughts on this week's theme of hospitality:

I didn’t read ahead.  Honest.  When I was voicing my opinion last week that solitude should not be an end result, I was still “struggling” with the suffering solitude seemed to cause without obvious benefits for others.  Needless, to say, I loved this week’s devotions starting with the first sentence for Sunday:  Hospitality and solitude keep each other in balance.  It makes complete sense to me that the more room you make for God in your heart, the more you will be compelled to make “room for others.” (p. 60) God is love and by accepting that, I think a person will be led to act out that love to others.  Now, believing that and carrying it out are two different things.  Several statements were great reminders to me this week.  Any lesson that involves Mary and Martha always strikes a note to me about too much emphasis on that To Do List.  In her book, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, Joanna Weaver give the humorous example of Martha’s out-of-balance thinking.  She suggests that Martha’s first thought when she heard Jesus was coming to dinner was that if she hurried she could carve the cheese into an ark and serve it with animal crackers.  Balance.  It is all about the balance.  That art of filtering out the fluff and putting your guests’ real needs first.  This idea was reinforced in Monday’s lesson explaining how prayer and solitude keep us serving with a “glad heart” instead of grudgingly or self-righteously.  What a great reminder this is! Ephesians 6:7 ...rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man,  I need to put that on my fridge right above my weekly calendar and take a daily dose of it. In fact, I think I need to pause and re-read that now instead of rushing through this blog entry, so I can check it off THE LIST to get to the Children’s Sermon I need to do for Sunday and the Bible Study lesson I need to write for Monday.  Oh yes—slowing down, balancing, and serving with a glad heart.  I have worked my way past the “kicking and screaming” to appreciate how good this book has been for me.