Your favorite dish gets broken.

Your plans for a peaceful afternoon are interrupted because your guests stayed a long time after lunch. 

Your hard work in the kitchen goes seemingly unnoticed as hungry children scarf down a meal and run off, leaving a huge mess.

You labor to prepare a meal for eight guests but at the last minute have only three. 

You offer your guest room to someone in need, forfeiting your anticipated weekend of being home alone.

You open your home for a church event, but no one stays to help with the dishes.  

Your child invites a friend home after school, and you dig through the cupboard, feeling a bit embarrassed, to throw together a decent snack or dinner on the day before your planned grocery trip. 

You invite your Bible study group for coffee but notice some of the women exchanging glances as they squeeze around your table in your small apartment.  

Hospitality takes many forms and can produce a variety of emotions in those who extend it. Sometimes it’s easy and natural; other times it’s discouragingly difficult. But Biblical hospitality always pushes us to live out these verses – to value others above ourselves, above our stuff, above our schedules, above our self-image. Above our idea of how someone should receive said hospitality.  

I often want to extend hospitality on my terms. I want to have plenty of time in my schedule, plenty of food in the pantry, plenty of energy in my tank, plenty of good ideas of what to cook, plenty of space in my house, plenty of peaceful, well-behaved children. But those desires, while understandable, are all focused on me; if they rule the way I practice hospitality, then I’ll end up practicing hospitality in a very self-serving way.  

These verses in Philippians come in the context of imitating the humility of Christ: He lived and died sacrificially, providing the model for us to do the same and providing the salvation for sinners like us who are desperately selfish. By His grace, He can transform our hospitality into something that points to Him instead of to ourselves.