Ever since I read Christine Pohl's masterful "Making Room" about hospitality, my outlook on ministry changed. Hospitality, when properly recovered as an essential Christian tradition, makes an invisible God visible. Hospitality makes the gospel credible. I noticed this once again in the first few pages of "Three Cups of Tea"; the book about Greg Mortenson who started school after school in Pakistan. The village Chief of Korphe, (where Mortenson began the first school), Haji Ali says:
"Here (in Pakistan and Afghanistan), we drink three cups of tea to do business: the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family and for our family we are prepared to do anything-even die."
Not only did the people of Korphe share tea and shelter with a stranger, but when they noticed that Mortenson was not recovering well from his failed attempt to climb K2, they "ordered one of the village's precious chogo rabak, or big rams, slaughtered. Forty people tore every scrap of roasted meat from the skinny animal's bones, then cracked open the bones themselves with rocks, stripping the marrow with their teeth. Watching the ardor with which the meat was devoured, Mortenson realized how rare such a meal was for the people of Korphe, and how close they lived to hunger." As a result of this sacrificial gesture, Mortenson regained his physical strength. But even more than that, this hospitality gave him space and time to reconsider his life's mission and purpose.
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