Let everyone stop blaming everything on COVID-19. Let us finally be honest, shall we? Hospitality in America died a long, long time ago. Let us all cease making excuses and pretending. Hospitality is much more than a lost art, as Patricia Jean asks in the article below. Hospitality was a way of life for many folks. Older folks now passed on. Christians who as part of their nature in Christ practiced hospitality. Americans, once a hospitable people now an inhospitable people. And this is not because of a virus. This is due to something far more contagious that causes widespread illness and malaise.

More than a lost art. A debacle. An abomination in America. And, yes, a sin that hospitality is no longer practiced. And getting together once a week with your immediate family members, or relatives on holidays is not what passes for true hospitality.

I’m old. Seventy now. [But not feeble. I’m in the process of building a piece of furniture today in fact and I can outwork on most days most 30 and 40 somethings. I’m knitted together that way]. I grew up in a different America. No Internet. No personal computers, Smartphones, or social media — all the devices and technology that folks have been sold a line of dung that brings people closer together, creates a more social environment and world when the reality is every device and technology has added to self-imposed, self-loving isolation. The death of hospitality.

I grew up in a world of hospitality, especially in the household I grew up in. There was not a week that passed that my family didn’t have people over to our house — always with a meal — and where we would be going to someone’s home as well. It was daily life. Then.

Presently, and for decades now — stop blaming the lockdown and the pandemic, and just because many things changed and there is no going back, no restoration of how things were prior to an event shunning being hospitable, refusing to practice hospitality does not need to continue — but for decades now hospitality in America has been dead. Something of the past. Like phonebooths and 78rpm records. Only this passing is tragic because it involves actions human beings ought to be taking. On a regular basis. To discover what SOCIAL actually means!

And to obey the Word of God, dear Christian.

Just a few Scripture references, thus the God-breathed words of God to us with regard to hospitality;

Isaiah 58:7, Hebrews 13:2, Romans 12:13, Romans 12:20, 1 Peter 4:9, Luke 14:13, 1 Timothy 5:10, and Titus 1:8.

I grew up in a household where we ate every dinner meal together around the table. No phones. No TV. Dinner time was family time. Even sitting around the table arguing at times with no one getting up and leaving the table, no one overly sensitive or so otherwise occupied they could not be at the table for a family meal. Over a real homecooked meal from scratch. No microwave — gulp down poor quality food and get going on to whatever seif(ish) pursuit, only eating because it is required in order to live.

You may not have seen it, or you may not remember it, but a few years ago the actress Jamie Lee Curtis was the person hired for a national television commercial instructing families to set aside ONE NIGHT A WEEK WHERE THEY ALL EAT DINNER TOGETHER!

A national campaign was required to basically beg people to do what they should normally do.

The table with food, the home with an open door, and an invitation to others no longer exist. Especially in America.

Not only tragic but a sin.

My wife and I have attended the same church for going on six years. It’s the largest congregation either of us has ever belonged to. It’s a very large church in the way of human beings attending the services.

In almost six years now we’ve been invited to one family home.

It was one of the most memorable evenings and times of conversation, genuineness, love, laughter, and hospitality I’ve experienced. I hadn’t experienced anything like it in well over 30 years or so when my mother was still alive. When hospitality was the way people lived. It’s been that long.

The Christan home my wife and I were invited into that evening was delicious. Not only in the food ingested. In the true words, every person spoke. In every laugh not forced or just being polite [which actually isn’t being polite if not sincerely funny and laughing instantaneously].

A wonderful family invited us in.

The mother was one of the most hospitable people I’ve ever met in my life. As were her husband and three children who were teenagers at the time. No phones at the table. No TV on. No side conversations amongst themselves, no conversation that would make guests feel like strangers not knowing the people or events being discussed. It was hospitality. As it ought to be.

Sadly, for us still in this fleshly realm, the mother, a true saint, passed on this past January. Joyfully for her because there is no doubt she is presently in the presence of the Lord and all the heavenly hosts, and her husband, her incredible children while sad at losing her in their lives they all know and rejoice she is with the Lord.

Her memorial service was attended by well over 1,000 people. Think that she knew and practiced hospitality?

Where has it gone? Willingly cast aside.

Why? Because people have determined to isolate themselves. To become evermore self(ish), self-involved, self-driven. SELFISH. Hiding, refusing to converse, not knowing at this time how to partake of a real conversation and to sit around a table, and break bread with others — take the time to research what “breaking bread” really means and why it was and is important in its original context.

My wife and I moved to our present home almost eight years ago. Where we previously lived, in a housing development — we now live in the woods, no housing development — with my family background of hospitality along with my being a classically trained and educated chef I liked having people over, getting to know them, to laugh and converse, and to cook good food and sit around a table for about 2 hours before finally getting up for more comfortable seats and further conversation.