Trevor Williams on "Making Room" by Christine D. Pohl

I am going to be honest, Making Room by Christine D Pohl did not grip me the way I thought it would. I was ready for a smooth read that would challenge my thought but still provide a plentiful supply of inspirational stories, colorful imagery, and easy-to-read-hip-lingo. What I encountered was a book thick with history and academia. Slow, trudging sentences that required full concentration. I would read whole paragraphs, then have to go back and re-read them over, making sure I absorbed the message. It honestly was a chore to sit down, and dare I say, 'make room' for this book in my life. However, this struggle of mine might provide insight into the content itself.

Often in the post-modern church, hospitality is easily romanticized. The rejection of traditional ideas of dogma and the deconstruction of legalism have in some cases led to yet another intellectual subscription. Agape love. Welcome. These are very positive and much needed things, but they are kept in the realm of fantastical abstractions. “Man, its all about loooove.” I'll admit, I have erred in this way myself, but I am reminded yet again that love means work. In the same way that I had to struggle though reading Pohls' book, she makes clear that hospitality itself is a struggle, “we cannot separate the  goodness and the beauty of hospitality from its difficulty.”

Once we take hospitality from the formal and into the practical, there are several issues that arise in the welcoming of strangers and refugees. Pohl discusses several matters, such as the limitations of resources, community boundaries, and temptation to use hospitality as a means to advantage. The reality is that there are limits to what we can do; we will not always be able to provide for every single person. There are also boundaries that need to be set in order to provide sustainable welcome. However, she states that we must frame our hospitality around God's never ending kindness which “challenges us to reconsider our commitments.” This means that through limitations, we must continue to give more. But despite all of the ways in which hospitality takes on practical challenges, Pohl reminds us that making room really implies an openness of heart before a physical location. Putting our hospitality in the framework of God's grace is an eye opening practice. It begs the question, “am I really doing all that I can to welcome strangers...as much as God has welcomed me?”

Although hospitality is a large commitment, and requires much work, what I find amazing is that it doesn't require one to have “arrived” in order to act it out. In actuality, hospitality is most full when we are operating out of our own short-comings, alienation, and oppression. When we can truly identify with the guest we are taking in, even becoming a guest ourselves, that is when hospitality really starts to breath life. This reminds me of Jesus poignant instructions as he is sending out the twelve disciples, telling them that they need to lose their whole lives for his sake in order to truly find life. There is nothing I have to put on or acquire for hospitality, but more precisely, there is much I have to die to: pride, comfort, selfishness, a sense of power, my “I” so to speak. It is in my own poverty that I can transition from self righteous “service” to actually becoming one with the guests whom I am hosting.

Hospitality is work. It will not be fun most of the time, but it will be true, and real. In my life struggle of letting the spirit take away my idea of “self” I will find hospitality as an extension of who Christ already is within me, and dealing with the practical matters will be simply part of the journey.