Real Hospitality and the Grace of God

Can a God who judges also be a God who is gladly and indefinitely hospitable?

"Think of your experience of God's grace in terms of hospitality: at a point of great need and alienation, he takes you into his family, provides a cleansing bath and gives you new clothes; he invites you to his nourishing table and blesses you with his presence. And he extends this welcome indefinitely. This is what God is like and what he wants us to be like. Hospitality means welcoming others and offering provision, protection and blessing. It doesn't happen only at our dining tables. Our texts this week reveal the shape of hospitality. In serving others, we actually serve God, as the Abraham story and Jesus' teaching about judgment make clear. In fact, our hospitality communicates the gospel and embodies God's grace, especially when we offer it to those with the greatest need and the least ability to pay us back." (Italics mine)


Scriptures: Genesis 18:1-17; Deuteronomy 10:12-22; Psalm 23; Ruth 2 and 4:13-22; Matthew 25:31-46; Luke 14:1-14; 3 John

We invite you to pay attention to the wonder of an indefinite welcome of God and what that might mean to you...Join us at Starting Point as we wander into the questions,frustrations and hopes that lie in this idea...Can a God who is judge also be a God who is hospitable?

Beginning to Understand...It's O.K. to be "Bent"

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“When mercy stole quietly into my soul, the trembling stopped and the tears—which in my self-estrangement had dried up—began to flow again. The touch of infinite kindness to my nothingness wasn’t mere tenderness; it was suffused with a gentleness that transcended tenderness. And yet the experience was so subtle that mercy entered my heart unnoticed.

“The shabby streets of my soul were still littered with the debris of vanity, dishonesty, and degraded love. It wasn’t as if a sanitation worker had suddenly appeared to rid the neighborhood of every mound of unsightly garbage. When mercy came in the back door, my character defects didn’t bolt out the front door; they went underground, but they didn’t leave (and still haven’t). What happened is virtually impossible to explain—and it’s better for that. What I intuitively apprehend now, in retrospect, is that mercy kissed my brokenness, Too-Much-Love (John 3:16) cradled a wounded child, and for a biblically valid but inexplicable reason it was okay to be bent.”

-Brennan Manning, The Wisdom of Tenderness, p. 143-144

We invite you to come as you are, where you are, with where you've been and what you've been...Along with all the questions you might have. All of it belongs in the grand story...

What changes us? Relationships...

“Inevitably, what changes people’s lives is not some concept or principle. It’s not some bestselling self-help book or the memorizing of Scripture. Instead, what powerfully transforms, over and over and over again, is relationship. It’s the presence of Jesus embodied in a friend, a therapist, a pastor, a group, in Christ’s broken body shared in the Lord’s Supper. It’s a palpable taste of shalom.

It’s the relationship that transforms.”

-Chuck Degroat, Leaving Egypt, p. 201



Starting Point at Cedar Springs is first and foremost an exploration of, and an invitation to, relationships-with others and with God. Join us as we seek to realize how our lives, our journeys, our stories are remarkable parts of a grand, relational narrative. It's messy, it's mysterious, and it is beautiful.