Karen Burton Mains Quotes

Hospitality, however, seeks to minister. It says, "This home is not mine. It is truly a gift from my Master. I am His servant and I use it as He desires." Hospitality does not try to impress, but to serve.

Secular entertaining is a terrible bondage. Its source is human pride. Demanding perfection, fostering the urge to impress, it is a rigorous taskmaster which enslaves. In contrast, Scriptural hospitality is a freedom which liberates.

Home is the place we should return to with eager spirits, the journey's end we reach with sighs of contentment.

When we understand that He is Lord of our time, we realize that interruptions are of His planning. They become opportunities to serve rather than plagues to keep us from functioning.

God's Creation gives usa model for making and sharing homes with people, but the reality of God's Trinitarian life suggests that Christian hospitality goes farther than that. We are not meant simply to invite people into our homes, but also to invite them into our lives. Having guests and visitors, if we do it right, is not an imposition, because we are not meant to rearrange our lives for our guests - we are meant to invite our guests to enter into our lives as they are. It is this forging of relationships that transforms entertianment... into hospitality... As writer Karen Burton Mains puts it, "Visitors may be more than guests in our home. if they like, they may be friends.

...the heart is a vessel not large enough to sustain love. Kneeling is the proper position for discovering love again.

It is proper to say that the Christian's primary purpose as a steward is to add to the estate of his Master and not to that of his own.

In some strange way, when we are about His business, He makes the eternity, about which we know so very little, work in our favor.

Getting to know oneself is a lifelong process, and knowing God is a matter that takes eternity; yet it is only as we get to know ourselves as well as the God who transcends us that we can discover our unique reasons for being, our goals.