HOSPITALITY

Traveling on a foot path, the wilderness most often is a perfect picture of hospitality.  The experience expands the human soul, the pure air opens an individual mind to claim a great dream, and the reality of how free God created us fills our being with words unspoken, “Thank you God for your hospitality.  Hospitality, in its purest form, frees the stranger to feel at home in another’s environment.  Hospitality empowers the stranger to express the very core of what is important to the traveller.

Abraham is inspired by wildernesses hospitality through the appreciation of a Terebinth tree.  Old growth Terebinth trees are quite spectacular in their breath and color planted against the backdrop of an arid world.  They have red berries like small immature grapes and leaves constructed like feathers that change colors, displaying bright red colors that look like red coral.  This wilderness expression of hospitality inspires Abraham’s vision to stare in awe of God’s presence under its shelter.  There three travelers join the Lord, and inspire Abraham’s following actions.  Abraham seeks to duplicate God’s hospitality for these travelers.

Then the Lord appeared to him by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day.  So he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing by him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the ground, and said, “My Lord, if I have now found favor in Your sight, do not pass on by Your servant. Please let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. And I will bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh your hearts. After that you may pass by, inasmuch as you have come to your servant.”
They said, “Do as you have said.”  Genesis 18: 1-6