A Prayer about Hospitality

Where do you get that living water? John 4:11

Lord Jesus,

What a host you are! 

We confess, in our world, 

especially for those of us who live in the southern part of the U.S., 

we are confused about hospitality. 

We often think it’s all about 

cleaning up our homes, 

baking blueberry pie, 

and inviting people to dinner. 

And there’s nothing wrong with that. 

But help us to see your hospitality, 

your welcome of a stranger, 

in this beautiful and true story in John 4. 

You were weary and thirsty. 

You asked a Samaritan woman (an outcast in that culture) 

to give you a drink of water. 

She was shocked. 

And then you began talking with her 

about the living water you could offer her. 

She was curious. 

“Where do you get this living water?” 

Then, shockingly, you raised one of the topics 

we definitely are told 

not to discuss in polite dinner table conversation—

her sex life: 

“You have had five husbands, 

and the one you have now is not your husband” (John 4:18). 

But you didn’t say it to shame her. 

You said it to invite her to the truth: 

she needed you to give her the living water 

that would wash her sins away. 

She left her meeting with you thrilled, ecstatic, 

eager to invite her townspeople, 

people who had rejected her, 

to “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. 

Can this be the Christ?” (John 4:29). 

Lord, grow in us the kind of hospitality 

that invites those who rejected us 

to meet the One who can give them living water. 

Amen.

Read John 4:1-42.