Innkeeping Reflections
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007Every Christmas season, a different character from that original story catches my attention and invites my personal reflection. Usually they are not what we might call the main characters, but are those who are either briefly mentioned or whose presence can be inferred. This year I find myself considering the Innkeepers.
Here we have people who make their living by extending hospitality to others. They depend on welcoming strangers for their livelihood. The good innkeepers don’t do it just to make a buck. I can picture them being people who enjoy reaching out to people and making them feel at home. After all, if a traveler comes through and finds a nice place to stay once, you will have a steady customer who will spread the word to others. In order to act as they did in the story, they must have been overwhelmed with the census business. We know how difficult it is to be generous and hospitable when we feel stretched and stressed. So I find myself thinking that if they had only known who was standing at their door seeking a place of rest and a place to be born that they would have done whatever needed to be done to make a place for them.
At least, I would hope they would. Yet, when I look deeper at my own attitudes and actions, I wonder if they would have made the effort if they had known. There is a self-centered part to each of us that doesn’t want to be bothered. Maybe we find ourselves too busy seeking to get and receive to slow down and consider how we can give simply and genuinely. Maybe we find ourselves too focused on seeking specific goals in our lives that we miss the spontaneous gift of love that God offers us. Or maybe we know that by opening ourselves up to Love that our lives will be changed forever. Christmas is about the world changing forever anyway. We yearn to be more alive and loved, yet when that Love and Life comes to our doors it is too easy to be too busy.
Christ asks for a home in your soul, where he can be at rest with you, where he can talk easily to you, where you and he, alone together, can laugh and be silent and be delighted in one another. All this may seem daring, but it is true; it is the meaning of the Incarnation.
[Caryll Houselander, from Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany with Caryll Houselander, edited by Thomas Hoffman.]
This Christmas hear the invitation of God to make room in your heart and life for the Joy of the World to come and fill you. Merry Christmas.
