God Can Use Cinnamon Rolls for His Glory
What does hospitality mean to you? Does it mean a spotless home, a perfectly set table, and great food? Scripture has a different approach to hospitality – it’s not that cleaning and preparing our homes for guests and presenting a nice meal is not part of it. It is just that hospitality in scripture is really a means to an end. Opening the doors of our homes in hospitality is the means to invite people into our lives and hearts. Sharing a loaf of bread with others across the dining table creates opportunities to share the Bread of Life with them. If scrubbing and cleaning our homes becomes our focus, we might miss sharing the mess and dirtiness of our lives with others. If our greatest concern is wondering how a group of people will fit into our home, we may miss the opportunity to make room in our hearts for others. If we worry about making the perfect meal, we may miss sharing the only food that satisfies. If what we are doing in our hospitality interferes with people being encouraged to walk with God, then we are not engaged in Biblical hospitality. God is more interested in caring relationships than the dust behind the couch!
I love the verses in Hebrews 13:1-2. “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” God may be using you to bring someone to His table. Jesus was a wonderful model of hospitality – sharing food with his disciples and serving them as he taught them to care for others.
There are times when you walk into our church or my home and you smell warm cinnamon rolls baking – they smell good – they taste good – and they are a temptation to all weight watchers! But this act of hospitality is so much more – it says “welcome” to a neighbor, friend, church, wedding party, and anyone else who walks through our doors. We will never know when one of these rolls opens the opportunity to share the goodness of God and His love.
Our homes and our lives are indeed the most powerful combination of ministry to our world so don’t be afraid to share God’s love through hospitality. The next time you open your doors to others pray that your heart will magnify Christ in hospitality and point your guests to the only and everlasting meal that will truly fill their souls.
Diane Potter
Hospitality Expert
