Why a Table?

 The Hospitality of God

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! 

Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? 

Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.”

- Isaiah 55:1-2

Hospitality in the ancient world was a very different thing than our modern understanding of “entertaining.” In the ancient world, if you were a traveler, or an orphan, or a widow, you were the most vulnerable people in society because you didn’t have a family. A family provided a safe structure around people where they were not only fed and clothed and sheltered, but were also known and loved and included. 

Hospitality (which in Greek literally meant, “family love for strangers”) meant giving all the security of being a part of a family to people who didn’t have a family of their own. When understood this way, we realize the Gospel is God’s great act of hospitality to the world, it is his welcome to a vulnerable world without a spiritual family.

The church is the family of God. The Bible says that we were all orphans and the Lord adopted us. So now we call God our Father and each other brothers and sisters. God’s welcome into his family was not based on anything we did, but was based on his free grace and love.

Therefore, we hope that a defining quality of our church would be to extend that same welcome that God has given to us in Jesus to all who walk through our doors. There is great blessing to being a part of God’s family, and we want to share that blessing with others. So as Apostle Paul calls us to respond to the Gospel, “seek to show hospitality” (Romans 12:13).