Our daughter Elizabeth has blessed us by helping to coordinate guest logistics at Magnalia. What a joy it has been to host people from near and far, carrying with them stories and points of view very different from our own: people of many colors, creeds and occupations. It has helped cultivate in us a clear and simple mandate from the Scriptures in these polarizing times:
“Let brotherly love continue.” (Heb 13:1)
Our parents modeled for us what it is to have “an open home.” We don’t qualify in any way who comes to this place we call a Beacon. But, we do pray often the prayer of Francis and Edith Schaeffer:
“Lord, bring who should come and please, keep away whoever shouldn’t. Thy will be done.”
That said, this past year has stretched us because most guests walking to our front door, for the first time in our lives, have been complete strangers. We do not know them from Adam and Eve, as the saying goes. We’ve wrestled with the instinct to put people we’d meet into a proverbial “box” to try to understand them better, and we’ve been surprised repeatedly, learning along the way — ever learning. Which reminds us of the next verse:
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (Heb 13:2)
Our joyful musing this year is that we believe, no doubt, that we’ve been privileged to “have entertained angels unawares.” Elizabeth gave us a log of visitors from just the past several months. It reminded us that this is true. Here’s a link to it.
In a world seemingly being torn apart and atomized, may you know the joy of unexpected, in-person fellowship this year.
Happy New Year to you and yours, from us and ours!
Jim & Rachel
P.S. Here’s a link as well to our first-ever “Remnants Auction” (for those of you who missed the three-day Christmas Auction, and our listing of “New Projects on the Board” to invite your participation with us in this ministry at year-end.
Make sharing easy!
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