This week I share a reflection on the faith aspect of the concept of welcoming the stranger. This important principle has shaped my own approach to hospitality, and resonates with me as a parent at this time of year as two of my three children are welcomed into new school communities. As a society I think it beneficial for us to remind ourselves of how valuable diverse perspectives contribute toward positive experiences of community.
Blessings on your week ahead!
On Welcoming the Stranger
The role of the stranger in our lives is vital in the context of Christian faith, for the God of faith is one who continually speaks truth afresh, who continually makes all things new. God persistently challenges conventional truth and regularly upsets the world’s way of looking at things. It is no accident that this God is so often represented by the stranger, for the truth that God speaks in our lives is very strange indeed. Where the world sees impossibility, God sees potential. Where the world sees insecurity, God sees occasions for faith. Where the world sees death, God proclaims life. God uses the stranger to shake us from our conventional points of view, to remove the scales of worldly assumptions from our eyes. God is a stranger to us, and it is at the risk of missing God’s truth that we domesticate God, reduce God to the role of familiar friend.
(Parker Palmer, The Company of Strangers: Christians and the Renewal of America’s Public Life, New York: Crossroad, 1983, p. 59)
Keeping the Faith 