Artwork by J.Kirk Richards
The Incarnation, Hospitality and Advent | by David Ruis
In late November, we gathered online for the last in our series of 2025 devos around the theme of Hope, Healing, and Hospitality. It was a rich time of communal pressing in and seeking the Lord together. In particular, many of us were moved by the way the themes of hospitality and light wove together throughout the stories of advent, the communal anticipation of the coming of Christ.
Here are a few musings pulled out from that time:
The idea of Christian hospitality is inextricably linked to the doctrine of the incarnation. God himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, became a guest or stranger in the world.
When God became man in Christ, he entered humanity as an alien or a stranger. He then lived his life in such a way that he was always dependent on the hospitality of others.
Even Jesus experienced the vulnerability and rejection of being a stranger. In this way, the manger holds an interpretive key that unlocks the mystery of the whole gospel.
In Mary we witness the hunger, thirst, weariness, and needs of a vagrant pregnant woman, who was turned away again and again with no safe place to lay her head nor the head of her expectant child.
A dark world that could not perceive light come in the guise of a stranger.
And yet, in a world that was lost, God chose to be among us.
God still says, "Welcome!"
In the midst of a violence and instability, the cradle cries out "Peace be with you."
In the birth of this excluded, unwelcomed Christ child we hear God say, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest."
Henry Nouwen says:
"In our world full of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture, and country, from their neighbours, friends, and family, from their deepest self and their God, we witness a painful search for a hospitable place where life can be lived without fear and where community can be found. Although many, we might say even most, strangers in this world become easily the victim of a fearful hostility, it is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings.
The movement from hostility to hospitality is hard and full of difficulties. Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful, defensive, aggressive people, anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion, always expecting an enemy to suddenly appear, intrude, and do harm.
But still—that is our vocation: to convert the hostis into a hospes, the enemy into a guest, and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced."
The season of Advent is known as the "season of light".
waiting. anticipating. longing.
each candle - lit and burning - a prophetic statement that the light has come - is coming - that this is not the end though the road seem dark
like signal fires blazing a path through the night to guide and to instill hope
we are a beacon to all those who are
waiting. anticipating. longing.
that they are invited - here - with us - now -
to wait with us
to journey with us
into the Way of Jesus - the eternal path
- to eternal life and light
For centuries leaving the light on - a light in the window - a candle burning
has been used as a sign of hospitality - a beacon of welcome
a sign that someone is home - waiting for your arrival
not only for friends and weary travellers - but for those needing refuge
in Christian tradition and history this practice has been intertwined
with the call to hospitality - the welcoming of the stranger
"you can find help here ... hope here ... healing here"
refuge. safety. Peace.
Will we be a people who "leave the light on?"
