Teddy Dickerson on "Making Room" by Christine D. Pohl

How do you write a one-page reflection on a book that challenged you, educated you and inspired you greatly?  I think that it is impossible to separate what we read in a book like Making Room from what God is doing in our lives and what ministry we are involved in.  Me, I have the opportunity to live with seven men who have dealt with drug and alcohol addictions.  As I stepped into this role as house manager, little did I know that God would use the men and the situations to teach me something incredible about hospitality.

I have to remember that hospitality was first extended to me by God through the act of Jesus dying on that cross and demonstrating the ultimate welcome into His Kingdom.  This is something that Pohl touches on many times throughout the book and for good reason; I/we are strangers in this land.  The continued experience of hospitality from Christ helps compel me to extend hospitality to others.

I strongly agree with Pohl in regards to being the “host” to these “guests” but really feeling like I (the host) have received so much more from these men (the guests) then I have given.  I did not go to school to be a counselor or a hospitality guru but I have learned the power of being present in people’s lives, mainly through what God has taught me through the presence of different people in my life.  There are times when I don’t know what I am doing but that is when I am so thankful for the reminder of God’s grace and His work that is already going on in the lives of the men I live with. 

   Making Room has challenged me to step beyond what I know of hospitality in my western mindset back into a hospitality demonstrated by Jesus and the early church; to embrace the guests, the poor, the sick, the lost, the widowed, the young, the “Jesus’” of this world.  I want to ask myself more regularly now, “did I see Jesus in them and did they see Jesus in me?”