Column #2 - The Joys of Hospitality

I Peter 4:9 tells us to "Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling." We know that some have entertained angels unawares, and that widows were placed on widow lists when they exhibited hospitality. Clearly it is an important virtue to be hospitable.

The question is, why? Surely this is a bit obscure. Loving-as-we-are-required aside, why invite people into your home to eat your food and put wet cups on wooden pianos?

At last I have arrived at an answer. Logic and experience have come together to make a stunning revelation. Matthew Henry will probably want to tuck this somewhere in his commentary. Or maybe he'll make it into a major point. Or would have, if he was alive.

Hospitality is important because it makes us clean things that we otherwise wouldn't! Like houses! Or rooms!

I had a friend come over yesterday. She's a new friend, and one who hasn't seen my apartment before. And you know what this extreme case of hospitality led to? I dusted my bookshelves. They haven't been dusted since I moved in about a year ago. Whew. They needed it.

Since then I've been caught gazing raptly at my bookshelves and their radiant whiteness for long periods of time. Okay, not quite. But I have definitely admired their cleanliness more than once!

It's worth some water stains in order to gain that added dose of cleanliness. Which is next to godliness, as we all know (I think that's somewhere in Matthew Henry, too).

And besides, I don't even own a piano.