Hospitality

    What is hospitality? That is the question that has been bouncing around my mind the last few days. I have some pretty odd and pronounced food allergies - chiefly an allergy to meat products due to a lack of digestive enzymes. Generally, folks have been very accommodating around my issues, and over the years I've been able to clearly articulate my needs.
   This past week I received an email from a group putting on a mandatory meeting I had to go to that they could not meet my needs, or the special needs of others, and keep the food under their budget. It didn't sit very well with me. When I was talking to some friends about it they remarked that I was reacting to the lack of hospitality. Yet other colleagues thought it was very hospitable to tell me, at least, that they could not accommodate me.
    Hospitality has become a buzz word in churches the last few years  -but the problem is that very few churches actually do it well. For hospitality goes beyond having a table or greeters - its going out of your way to meet the needs of others. Hospitality is an act of sacrifice, not convince. And it comes at a cost. What would the world look like if we extended hospitality not as a profunctorary sign, but ratter as a mark of respect? And for Christians, what if we treated each other with the hospitality that we would extend to our Risen Lord?