The Daily CHEW™
Moving God’s love from head to heart for Christian professionals
The Saturday schedule is already full before anyone extra gets added to it — errands penciled in, one project you promised yourself you’d finally finish, maybe a game to get to by eleven. Then someone shows up anyway — a neighbor, a coworker without family nearby, one of your kid’s friends who just wandered in through the back door — and your kids are watching what happens next more closely than you think.
C.H.E.W. with Me
New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.
C – Clarity: The Extra Chair Nobody Planned For
Hospitality rarely arrives on the calendar. It shows up as an interruption to a Saturday that was already accounted for, and what a parent does in that unplanned moment — wave them off with a polite excuse, or actually pull up a chair — teaches something no lecture about generosity ever could.
H – Hear: Some Have Entertained Angels Unawares
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Hebrews 13:2)
The Greek word behind “hospitality,” philoxenia, is a compound word — phileo, brotherly affection, joined to xenos, a stranger or outsider. It’s literally “love of the outsider,” built into a single word so there’s no room to redefine hospitality as something reserved only for people already inside your circle.
The writer isn’t offering a vague sentiment; he’s pointing to a pattern that runs through Scripture — Abraham’s three visitors at Mamre, travelers received without knowing who they truly were. The command assumes you won’t always know the value of who’s in front of you at the moment you decide whether to make room. This is God’s love in miniature: a love that doesn’t audit a person’s worth before deciding they’re welcome, and as recipients of God’s love we get to keep the same posture. Hospitality, in this text, is a practice you keep regardless of whether you can see the payoff — the angels in the story never announced themselves in advance.
E – Exchange: What Gets Modeled, Not Just Taught
Kids don’t learn hospitality from a lecture — they learn it from watching who gets to stay for dinner. The extra chair pulled up on a busy Saturday teaches your children faster and deeper than any conversation about generosity ever could, because it costs you something real, in real time, in front of them.
Because God’s love welcomes the outsider without counting the cost, how does that change how you respond the next time you have a chance to extend hospitality?
W – Walk: Invite One Person Today
This Saturday, invite one person outside your immediate household to something ordinary — lunch, a walk, sitting on the porch for twenty minutes — and let your kids watch you extend the invitation out loud, not just hear about it secondhand afterward. Say who it’s for and why, in front of them, before you make the call.
Closing question: Do your kids think of your home as a place with room, or a place that was already full?
With you on the journey,
Ryan
Ryan writes these with AI to help him say it better. Read more →
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