Hospitality...

There's a party planned.  T minus three days and counting.  32 women, a number of dead chickens, vegetables because we are women and try to be healthy...mix with a little wine...whoopee!  Party!

I really thought this would be a good idea two months ago when we all sat in a very noisy restaurant trying to talk to each other.  Seemed pretty easy.  Everyone is pitching in for the cost of the food.  Simple...easy.

But preparing for a party, especially one for Presbyterian Women, especially one for many women who have never been to your home can be a bit nerve wracking.  I want to practice hospitality.  I fight against practicing perfectionism.

Like my house is anywhere near perfect anyway...not a chance.  There is always a project brewing--a direct result of not enough time or money to just do/get everything you want.  Something is always out of place, especially now with two adult children home with all there stuff...especially now with carefully placed furnishings pushed up against the walls to make room for tables.

In this Advent season, we are asked to prepare for the coming of God's Kingdom...for the inbreaking of God into our real lives...our messy, nowhere near perfect lives.  I've spent a lot of energy today creating some beauty to enjoy together, some space in which we can eat and visit and get to know each other a bit better.

I guess we could wait for perfection and then have the PW to our homes....like never.  Or we could open ourselves to the hospitality of being together...of relationship building...of breaking bread and becoming family.  (Which, by the way, is the goal I keep reminding myself of!!!)

Perhaps the coming of the Kingdom is tied to risking our imperfection with each other...opening up to each other and risking exposing our messy, nowhere near perfect lives to other people.  Perhaps the coming of the Kingdom is opening our messy, nowhere near perfect lives to God.