The Guest Book

“For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in.” —Matthew 25:35, NASB

Our family has a guest book that we bought while we lived in Zimbabwe, ministering at the Southern Africa-Indian Ocean Division. I wanted something to help me keep a record of the people who had shared a meal with us around our table.

Each time I go through the names and comments, memories flood back.

Sometimes I recall the jokes and stories we shared.

Other times I can recall the dishes I served and how much we all enjoyed the meal. Most of our guests work at my husband’s office.

Sometimes they were in transit and needed to rest for a while.

And sometimes my husband would just show up with guests, trusting I would somehow quickly come up with a delicious meal.

Opening my home to others has served as a way for me to check my priorities. This became very real to me just a few weeks ago when I entertained again.

As the guests wrote their names in my book, one of them asked if we had been out of town for a while. They asked because they noticed a big gap between the dates of my last guest’s signatures. I said I had been entertaining, but that either they were people I knew or they had been to our home before. This made me stop and think—how many strangers had I entertained? None! Every name in my guest book is a person I know.

We work together, go to the same church, and move in the same circles. I realized that it is easy for me to fill up the guest book with friends’ names.

And while I get praised for opening my home to guests, in an actual sense, they are not guests. They are friends. Most of them, especially those that live nearby, have invited us to their homes in return. But Jesus is expecting more from us.

He asks us to care for those less fortunate than us, those who are in need, and to visit those who have no family or friends.

The world may praise us for being hospitable, but if we do not care for “the least of these,” we are not doing the right thing.

May the Lord help us so that when He comes, we will hear Him say, “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me” (Matthew 25:40, NKJV).

Gertrude Mfune