august challenge: hospitality

Well, the month is half over and I haven't posted my monthly spiritual discipline challenge. I've had one in my head; I just haven't told you all about it.

Yesterday I delivered a basket of goodies over to our new next-door neighbors Ross and Lindsey. I took Isaiah on a sweaty walk to drop another one off for a man whose wife had just died yesterday morning. I tell this to my shame because in the three-plus years we have lived here, I have never given gifts to people in my neighborhood. I've wanted to, but I've learned that that doesn't count for much in the sheep-and-goat separation.

This month, I want to learn what hospitality really is. I always think it's about having people over and being a gracious host, but I've heard there's more to it than that.

We're having a group from church over on Saturday, and I hope that will be the first of at-least-monthly parties at our house. I want to fling open our doors and invite the whole world inside. If I can't run a coffee shop now, our house will have to do in the meantime.

dollars

I was Sapphira and kept back a dollar
Because I wanted to buy a can of Coke.
It cost me seventy-five cents,
And it didn’t taste good.
The rest I gave to the Latino man
Who dried off my car.
And I felt so generous that I expected
A thank you
Or something.
The quarter I put in my secret stash
Of money to give away
Because I couldn’t keep it to spend.

I want a thousand dollars to give to the single mom
Who waits on my table some years hence.
It’s called grace, charity.
I ought to know because I’ve been given it.
She went and got herself knocked up.
She screwed around. She messed up.
And now she’s fighting hard to make it.
So with my thousand dollars in my purse,
I remember the times I screwed around,
And somebody showed me grace.
So I hand her the cash.

Or I will, provided I don’t keep a dollar back
To buy a can of Coke.

june challenge: evangelism

As I complete each month's challenge, I realize how I can never stop developing each of the spiritual disciplines I've tried to tackle. Committing myself to prayer has revealed to me how much more I need to communicate daily with God in a genuine and humble way. Focusing on loving my neighbor as myself has not closed the door on ways to give of myself but rather opened a flood of new ones.

And now this -- evangelism. I'll complete my monthly goal and move back to life as usual, right? I doubt it. I hope not. If I thought about what giving myself to evangelism might mean for my future, I might back away at the whelming pressure. But the most daunting of disciplines begins with a single step. That single step is all I will try to commit to this month: reaching one person.

Our small group from church is walking through a study series called Just Walk Across the Room, based on the book by Bill Hybels. Hybels argues that it's not a Christian's job to present a four-point gospel message to every unbeliever she knows (or whatever her preferred method is). Instead, a Christ-follower should simply be sensitive to the Holy Spirit's promptings... maybe to present that four point message, but maybe not, too. Maybe it's just walking across the room to introduce myself to a stranger or inviting someone to church. The point is that I'm available, not to do all the work myself (I'm not capable of converting a soul anyway; that's God's job!), but to do the job God wants me to do -- speak a word, lend a hand, extend an invitation.

I don't know what part of the evangelistic journey God will call me to take, but I'm praying to be open to His opportunities, starting this month.

may challenge: loving my neighbor as myself

I admit it: every time I set a goal, I imagine that at the end of the time period, I will have mastered whatever I had set out to master. I guess that's a good thing because I am now a faithful prayer warrior! Ummm... whatever.

But I did decide that instead of kicking myself in the shins for failing to meet my own expectations, I would rejoice in the grace of improvement. My prayer life is more solid than it was a month ago, praise God! I expect that my future spiritual discipline challenges will be reason enough to keep praying.

I struggled to choose a specific discipline for the month of May. I feel compelled to practice reaching out to people -- my literal neighbors, the poor, my husband, just to name a few. I considered focusing on hospitality or generosity, but I decided to start with something more general because of the things I want to accomplish this month. If I need to develop a more specific discipline in a later month, I will.

I think the biggest challenge this month will be practicing genuine love. I have some specific ways I would like to reach out to others -- actions that I hope they will interpret as love -- but to know in my heart that I really love the people I am reaching out to is an entirely different thing. First Corinthians 13 keeps going through my head: "and though I give all my goods to feed the poor, but have not love, it profits me nothing."