I grew up on 10th Avenue in Southside, a neighborhood with small front yards and big front porches. Neighbors waved to the kids riding their bikes and waited for the paperboys who threw the afternoon news onto their porches from the sidewalk. Huntington High students picked the low-hanging apples from our Red Delicious tree. You might be waved up to a porch swing for a bit if you went out for an evening walk.

Now, I live in a house with a front “stoop.” There is no sidewalk in the front yard. But we have a big, brick patio in our private backyard. If we sit outside in the evening, it is almost always in the backyard.

There is an important verse in the 23rd Psalm that escapes many of us. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” [Ps 23:5] It is a verse on hospitality. In Middle Eastern culture, hospitality is a duty even to this day. Even your enemy is to be treated as an honorable guest if she comes to your home. Your home was to be a sanctuary for your guests. To turn a guest away was and is a terrible dishonor. The 23rd Psalm speaks of God as the host who brings together enemies through the honor of hospitality.

For the first thousand years of the Christian Church, hospitality was an important spiritual practice. There were no hotels around. Travelers had to sleep out in the open, or among friends and extended family, or through the kindness of strangers. But today we can do everything on our own. We can stay in a nice, quiet hotel room, follow the directions of the latest GPS, eat at a quality restaurant, and speak no more than a couple of complete sentences to any strangers that day.

In the drive for freedom and independence, we have often found isolation. We lack a strong sense of community. Hospitality invites us back into community. It is not about providing a big spread. “Pull up a chair” can simply be an invitation to feast on some tall tales, which will probably fill your spirit. Hospitality encourages us to be front porch people in a backyard world.

~ Dr. Tim Moore