Why We Must Practice Hospitality in a Broken World
Family and friends welcomed them to a foreign land. My parents were the first of their families to move across the world to gain access to opportunity, education, and a different life. The United States was a welcoming country for those who had the option and means to make the trip.
They traveled with others, friends who were also making the bold leap. My dad considered New York, where my aunt lived, but chose to settle in Texas’s warmer climate. He and his friends started in small apartments, and soon their families journeyed over. My parents chose to leave the familiarity of Tehran for a foreign land. They already knew what it was to be foreigners in a land that was not their own as they were Armenians living in Iran. In the United States they were welcomed to live, to learn, and to become part of the people.
Practice Hospitality for Those Without a Choice
While my parents had the choice, many do not. People often enter foreign lands without agency or voice. Think of refugees, foster care children, or slaves; or those for whom home has changed due to divorces, remarriages, or deaths. Such people come against their wills, at the mercy of others, and without the security of an expected welcome. These are not choices made with agency but consequences of another’s choices. These people don’t choose to change their home; home is changed for them.
Practice Hospitality in a World of Fear and Uncertainty
We live in a world filled with fear and uncertainty, where places of home are hard to find. We get lost in stories told from a distance and believe the filtered social media images. We suffer the consequences of others’ decisions on both personal and global scales, and we withdraw in order to find safety in that which is closest to us. In this type of world, we need places and people of welcome. We need to take love, security, and hope to the stretches of our cities and expanses of our lands. And who better than those of us who know the love, security, and hope of a home in God?
Practice Hospitality Through God’s Unfailing Welcome
Our home with God is the welcome that is always offered to us—the home that never leaves and will always be with us. We have a God who, like a loving parent, created a space and place for us, giving us boundaries to protect us and purposes worth pursuing. This God became like us in Jesus, who walked in our world and loved it. And we have been given the Holy Spirit to be with us forever. This means that we Christians have a God who created home, moves toward us in Jesus, and lives with us. We are always home in God. We may stumble or even lose our way at times, but we can always come back home. And it is up to us to continue to remain in God and to replicate God’s welcome wherever we go.
Practice Hospitality as a Way of Life
Becoming a person of welcome starts with God, and it continues through us. Welcome isn’t only found in a place; it is primarily found in people. And if it is found in people, then it can be carried from hospitals to hotels, from offices to orphanages, and from the least to the greatest. As people of welcome, we can take God’s welcome wherever we go. How do we do this? Through the practice of hospitality.
Practice Hospitality Everywhere You Go
Taken from Becoming a Person of Welcome by Laura Baghdassarian Murray
©2025 by Laura Baghdassarian Murray. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.
Laura Baghdassarian Murray (DMin, Fuller Seminary) is the director of spiritual engagement and innovation at Fuller Seminary’s Center for Spiritual Formation. She is the author of Pray as You Are, serves on the Ministry Collaborative Advisory Board, and previously served at Highland Park Presbyterian Church as the pastor of spiritual formation. Laura is also the founder of the Digital Silent Retreat Ministry, which is rooted in the practice of hospitality to provide brave and courageous spaces for people to connect with God and others (www.digitalsilentretreats.com). She lives in the Dallas area with her husband and two children.
