I Would Never Treat A Guest Like This

Somebody knocks and you are on your feet before you have thought about it.

The kettle goes on. Something comes out of a cupboard that you were saving. You put the good cushion where they will sit. You ask about their mother and you mean it, and if they are cold you find them something, and if they are tired you tell them to sit down and you say it in a voice that does not permit argument.

None of that requires a reason. Nobody has to have had a hard week to be given a warm drink in your house.

Now go upstairs at eleven o'clock at night and watch what happens to the same woman.

Everything gets a reason. Ten minutes for yourself needs a justification. A warm bath is for when something has gone wrong. A thing that would be pleasant is either earned or postponed, and mostly postponed, and the postponing is so ordinary that it does not feel like a decision.

In my grandmother's house there was a law that a guest was fed before anything else happened. Before questions, before news, before sitting down properly. Food, warmth, a chair, and then whatever else.

And I watched her, for twenty years, feed everybody in that village and eat standing up at the counter.

Two standards in one house

Here is the thing worth noticing, and it is not a moral point about selfishness.

There is an excellent working knowledge of care in this house, better than most people alive have. You know what a tired person needs before they have said anything, and you supply it without making an event of it, and you do that four or five times a week for other people.

So the problem is not that you do not know how.

The problem is that there are two standards operating in one building, and one of them says: warmth is given freely, and the other one says: warmth is issued against a reason.

You are running two entirely different rules in one house, and there has never once been a reason your own door got the second one. The Holy Spirit is what shows a woman a rule she never agreed to, and Genesis 18 has the oldest hospitality in the book and it is worth reading closely.

And here is what the second rule quietly teaches.

If a thing has to be earned, then not having it means it was not earned, and a woman living under that rule for twenty years has been slowly informed, every single day, that she is somebody whose comfort requires justification.

Nobody ever said that to you. The rule said it, four times a day, without a word.

You are being told something daily by a rule rather than by a person, and no one in that house has ever once thought your comfort needed justifying. Scripture in Genesis 18 has water and rest offered before anybody has explained themselves, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a rule off a woman that nobody ever gave her.

Let a little water be fetched

The oldest hospitality in the Bible is three verses long and every detail is worth having.

Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts. (Genesis 18:4 and 5, King James Version)

Look at the order. Water, feet, rest, bread, comfort.

Not one word of it is contingent. Abraham does not ask who they are, where they have come from, how long they have traveled or whether they have earned anything. He does not establish need before supplying comfort.

They are at his door, so they get water. That is the whole transaction.

You are looking at care given with no test attached to it at all, and Abraham has never once been recorded asking whether anybody deserved a chair. It is written in Genesis 18 that he said let a little water be fetched and rest yourselves under the tree, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what unconditional care actually looks like on a page.

And look at the last three words, because they are the ones people skip.

Comfort ye your hearts.

That is what the bread is for. Not sustenance. Not necessity. Comfort, named outright as the purpose, in a sentence about a meal, by a man in a desert who understood exactly how much bread cost.

Comfort is a legitimate reason to do something. Scripture says it in the plainest possible words, and it says it about people who had not asked for anything.

You are permitted to do something for the sole purpose of comfort, and there has never once been a version of that verse where comfort had to be justified. The Spirit of God is what makes comfort a sufficient reason in a woman's own house, and the written word says comfort ye your hearts.

Offer yourself what you would offer a guest

So here is the assignment, and it uses a skill you already have.

Give yourself, tonight, one thing you would automatically offer a guest.

Not something new. Not something you have to think about. Whatever your hands would reach for if somebody knocked at nine o'clock looking tired.

You are already equipped for this, and your hands have never once needed instructions to know what a tired person needs. Genesis 18 says let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and rest yourselves, and the Spirit of God is the one who turns a woman's own hospitality back toward her.

The good tea rather than the ordinary one. The chair that is actually comfortable, rather than the one you sit on. A warm bath because it is nice. The blanket. Something out of the cupboard that has been saved for people.

And here is the whole exercise, which is one rule.

No reason. Do not have had a hard day. Do not have earned it. Do not do it because you are worn out, because that is the second rule again, wearing kinder clothes. Do it because a guest would get it, and you are in the house.

You are able to give yourself something on no grounds whatever, and hospitality has never once required a reason at anybody's door. The written word in Genesis 18 offers water and rest before anybody has explained themselves, and the Holy Spirit is what turns one warm thing into care rather than into a small reward.