The light is low inside the adobe hut where we are having our daily prayer meeting. One lone light bulb illuminates our surroundings and a ceiling fan lashed to the thatch roof keeps the mosquitoes at bay. The footprint of the building might be 100 square feet and a family of five lives here. This environment is quickly becoming commonplace and I am remarkably comfortable here, sitting in a plastic chair just outside the city of Chennai. We have just finished a time of prayer, worship, and fellowship. I know that soon we will eat dinner and I will have to face, yet again, a lesson that God is teaching me in both humility and hospitality.
We are always served first. As honored guests in both the homes we visit and in the home of our local contacts they wish to bless us by allowing us to eat first. Not only do we eat first but also we often eat our fill before our hosts eat anything at all. It took a bit of trial and error on our part and some direct questioning of our local contact to help us to find a way out of eating ourselves sick. Every time I would make a dent in the amount of food on my plate our host for the night would come and refill the void I had created. The first few nights I thought I might not be able to keep it all down (on a side note – I have yet to find an Indian dish I did not like). We did figure out how to courteously let our hosts know we had had enough food, but that we also truly enjoyed what we ate.
As I sat and ate I quickly became amazed at the level of hospitality these people whom we had just met were showing to us. I had literally just walked into their home and I was being treated like a long time friend to whom they owed their firstborn child. The next thought was harder to swallow – I am never this hospitable – not to anyone. Why is this so natural to them and so foreign to me? I have always considered my home as my refuge from the world. I have always jealously guarded my alone time, claiming that I need it to reenergize. I am introverted and I do need time alone in order to relax and reflect, but I have been taking it to an unhealthy extreme. I have had nearly no alone time in the last four months and I am surviving just fine, so there must be something else. I figured out that something else – selfishness. It requires selflessness to show hospitality, especially to strangers. I lack hospitality in my home because I am selfish with my time. That’s a hard pill to swallow, but it was followed up with another that is at least as bad.
People in India average earning $ 3 per day. I am not too sure how much the meal they prepared cost them, but it was a significant part of that income. They not only showed hospitality that I have never shown but their generosity was humbling. It’s truly humbling to be served in such a genuine a selfless way. There’s that awful word – humility – that I am afraid to pray for and that I desperately need (but lets face it – don’t we all?). I had to stop and ask myself – would I, given the same opportunity, be willing to spend a significant portion of my income on showing hospitality to a group of complete strangers who I couldn’t even speak to? I find it unlikely that I would. The beautiful people of India have already taught me a lot, but in the evening when we sing and pray and eat, I have learned how true hospitality and generosity look – a lesson I wont soon forget.
