Knock and the Door Will Be Opened: The Joy of Practicing (and Receiving) Hospitality

Posted on Mockingbird

My husband and I were ready and eager for a restful Friday night at home. It had been a long week and we were thankful to have time to slow down and connect. We cooked together, dancing in the kitchen, catching up and talking. We sat down and prayed, and took a deep breath. We settled into our meal and our stillness.

After we finished our dinner, we sat lingering at the table for a while. We were about to get up to prepare dessert when we heard a knock at the door. It was around 9pm—we weren't sure who would be coming over, unannounced. We opened the door and saw Andrew and Mackenzie, a brother-sister duo we know through our youth group at church.* Andrew is good friends with my husband and I had gotten to know Mackenzie a bit before she went off to college.

"Mackenzie is having an existential crisis," declared Andrew. I laughed, thinking he was joking—but when I looked at Mackenzie, I could see she was on the verge of falling apart. She burst into tears and fell into my arms. Consoling her as she wept, I guided her to the couch while my husband invited Andrew to sit down at the table.

Between sobs, Mackenzie tried to communicate what was happening. She was struggling with her relationship with her boyfriend, and thought they needed to break up. They’d started dating recently, and she had hoped their relationship would have blossomed more than it had. Instead, he only seemed to text her when he wanted a hook-up. She knew she wanted more than that, but she also was afraid of breaking it off. She wept because she wanted more from the boyfriend than he was giving, and craved depth and conversation. 

At the table, my husband was entertaining Andrew with card tricks in another room while I was deciphering Mackenzie’s tears. She sat there downcast, tears filling her eyes, her voice trembling. She knew this relationship wasn’t what she wanted. But deeper down, she was battling deep insecurities, feeling unworthy, unloveable, and afraid to be alone. I could see she was desperately lonely. She shared her heart, and I offered some encouragement, but mostly I was a shoulder to cry on. We prayed together, crying out to God in our mutual brokenness. It was sweet to be there and hold her and speak truth to her.

"Let's make some cookies," I said after she'd cleaned up her streaked mascara and started to calm down a bit. We got to work in the kitchen, making a giant cookie in a skillet—the best cure for an aching heart. After feasting on the warm gooey mess, we played some games. Our unexpected guests lingered and laughed—and loved. I was so delighted they showed up.

In The Gospel Comes with a House Key, Rosaria Butterfield paints a beautiful picture of radically ordinary hospitality. “Those who live out radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not as theirs at all but as God’s gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom. They open doors,” writes Butterfield. I want our home to feel open, inviting, and welcoming to all, at any time. I pray for more chances like to welcome someone into our home in the midst of their existential crisis. And it doesn't hurt to have a giant warm cookie, either.

Butterfield is clear, however, that we are not only to be hosts; we are to be guests as well. Hospitality is a dance of both giving and receiving.

I’ve been the one on the other side of the door, knocking and hoping someone would answer. Just a few months before these unexpected visitors came by, I went out for a walk in our neighborhood one morning. We had recently moved in, and I was getting to know the area.  When I arrived back home, the door was locked. Even worse, I had left my phone at home, and my husband was at the gym. Surely I hadn’t locked myself out. I checked again, no go. I went around to the back door, same story. I was locked out.

Ironically, this had happened to me the week before, except that time the back door had been open. I made a point to go to Lowe’s the next day to make an extra key we could hide away for such occasions … which was now sitting inside my locked house on the kitchen counter. I was stuck.

All other options exhausted, I walked over to my next-door neighbor’s house. Though I had met her a few times, we hadn’t gotten much past the driveway hellos. I climbed up the steps to her front porch and started knocking on her door. I knocked for an uncomfortably long time, standing there like a desperate door-to-door vacuum salesman. But I knew my options: knock on this door, or wait hopelessly on my porch until I was found. As I kept knocking, I started to calculate the distance it would take to walk to my nearest friend’s home, when finally my neighbor came to the door. My salvation was near! 

I explained the situation sheepishly and asked if I could borrow her phone to call my husband. He didn’t answer (it was an unknown number for him) so I was out of luck. “I can give you a ride to meet him at the gym,” my neighbor kindly offered. She’d already opened her door, lent me her phone, and now she was offering to take me somewhere. This was the right door to knock on!

I hopped in her car, apologizing profusely and thanking her for her help. As we drove, I started asking her about her family, and our conversations soon traveled well beyond neighborly pleasantries. It was just a few minutes in the car, but by the end my new neighbor was more friend than stranger. She had truly opened the door for me in more ways than one.

I love to host friends, making elaborate meals and talking late into the night. I love when people drop by unexpectedly. I don’t, however, always love being the one in need. But when I was the one knocking on the door, I found that my neediness actually opened more doors into my neighbor’s life. Receiving her hospitality allowed us both to open up our lives to each other. Butterfield writes, “Hospitality is not about having the perfect house or the perfect meal; it's about opening our imperfect lives to others.” And I have seen that goes both ways. Sometimes, in the very same moment, you might be the host, offering hospitality, and the guest, receiving the gift. Doors aren’t meant to always be locked shut. If you knock on them, you might be surprised to find that they open too. 

*Names have been changed.