Ep 275 Start With Your Inadequacy—Overcoming Barriers to Hospitality with Dr. Janice Brown

Do you feel inadequate regarding doing hospitality? That's the best way to feel! I know I talk a lot about hospitality and if you’ve been around awhile, you know why I do.  It’s not the same as entertaining. Do you understand the difference enough to go ahead and open your home, for heaven’s sake? Today we have Dr.Janice Brown to talk about rethinking Biblical hospitality.   Dr. Brown is a specialist in the work of C. S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers. And she’s taught on the college level as well as High School English, some of the time for missionary kids in Papau New Guinea with Wycliffe Bible Translators. She's a wife of 56 years, mother of 3 and grandmother of 6. Origninally from Newfoundland, she currently resides in Pennsylvania.  Some gems from our conversation: We are more like God when we invite in our creativity, whether it's something physical we make as  in making dinner or in making someone feel loved and seen as God loves and sees us. Hospitality is to invite someone in—but in a wider, deeper sense, it's to give of yourself, your space, your focus, your concern and your attention. When we do hospitality, God uses us, the host, in a grand and simple way to provide stability for someone who hasn't had that resource growing up.  God uses what we have and makes that enough. There's a preciousness in the idea that out of our poverty or sense of inadequacy that God uses us.  Poverty fosters generosity of spirit and motivates us to share more. We honor others' individuality by inviting them into our homes even when it feels hard to "put up" with what we feel is strange or uncomfortable.  The meal is the vehicle to engage with others and foster intimacy.  Follow Dr. Brown on her writer's page on Facebook under Janice Hudson Brown. And find her books on her Amazon author page.    ___ Do you prefer watching while listening?  We are on YouTube:     Welcome Heart: Knowing & Showing the Heart of God