As a Christian that believes we are saved by grace through faith alone, why do I think it’s important to serve others, specifically by hosting? It’s not just important to serve, it’s important that when we serve we do it out of a heart of love and with joy. When we open up our homes and host others we should be choosing to do so because we are so overwhelmed with the love of Christ that we want others to feel that same love. We are so filled with gratitude for the gift of salvation that all our earthly belongings are minuscule in comparison and the greatest joy we get out of them is letting others enjoy them.
It’s not always easy. Once, not long after my husband and I had installed new wood flooring in our first home, we had our friends over. At some point in the evening, we realized a friend had rocked a metal chair back and forth several times and left several indentations. Honestly, I was heartbroken. We swapped the chair, and I wrestled with the emotions the remainder of the evening. So how can we find joy in other people coming into our homes and denting our floors, or breaking our things, or making a mess?
Truthfully, we can’t. We are wired by God to love order because he is a God of order. But it’s a beautiful picture of redemption when He uses those dented floors to do a work in our hearts to remind us that this is not our true home. This earthly home is meant to be temporary, but he is building us a home that will never deteriorate.
We shouldn’t open our homes because we feel obligated to host. We open our homes because we see it as a gift that God gave us to share his love with others. At times, it’ll be hard. Our hard work cleaning will likely go unrecognized. Our things may get ruined. But if we allow God to work through it all, we will find joy in the dents in the floor because we’ll remember how that person felt loved and comfortable in our home because of the love of God manifesting itself through us. And we will grow “all the richer” because we will have given up what will not last, our home, for what will last an eternity, the people who fill it.
— Chelsea Nelson for The Sublime Soiree (c) August 2025
