The first time I heard JR’s voice, I thought the dead were speaking.
I was praying with a small group of guests to Community First! Village; they were participants in one of our early Symposia — so early, in fact, that none of the Village’s large meeting spaces had yet been built, and we were meeting in an outdoor pavilion. We were closing the two-day conference with a time of prayer, and each guest had prayed aloud in turn. I was about to close us with one final prayer, but before I could, I felt a hand on my shoulder, and a voice I didn’t recognized began to pray, asking God to pour out his blessing on the group, to carry them safely home, to bring us one day into His Kingdom.
For an instant, I felt as though some spiritual radio dial had turned, allowing me to hear a voice from beyond the veil, where members of the “great cloud of witnesses” pray for us.
After the “amen,” we all opened our eyes and saw who had joined us: a Black man in his sixties, with a gentle smile and merry eyes. “Just moved in yesterday,” he said. “I hope y’all don’t mind that I joined you.”
That was how we met JR, and in the years that followed he established himself as a model of hospitality. He and his best friend Waco picked houses that fronted the Village’s main road, and their delight was to sit on their front porches and welcome all who came. During the intense Texas summers, JR would buy packs of ice pops, store them in his dorm-sized freezer, and offer them to anyone who passed his home. The Village was a lively place, even in its early days, and so JR distributed popsicles to everyone from schoolchildren on a field trip to international diplomatic visitors: all of them coming to see what radical hospitality looks like in a fractured age.
When I was great with child in the summer of 2018 (my third pregnancy, but the first I carried to term), JR blessed me with many of these popsicles, and later, as the weather cooled, he wouldn’t let me pass without making sure I a piece of friend chicken, or some of the fish he and Waco had grilled that day. From his 200-sq-ft home, he shared his bounty with the little stranger I carried in my womb.
The host-guest dynamic is never static; even our Lord, when he lived as a man, served as both the great Host and the humble guest. My friendship with JR taught me the same lesson. For my part, I learned that hospitality begins with making yourself at home, and making sure at least one door into your life is open. Praying out loud, outside is perhaps not a normal practice for most of us, but it opened a door into my heart, and JR boldly walked through it. And as for popsicles, what are they? 10 for $2 at the grocery store; powerful instruments for the Kingdom of God.
JR did not remain the guest, the stranger, the beneficiary, and nor should he have. Once he had made himself at home in the Village, he took on the role of a host with rightful and golden pride. Eventually JR and I did not see one another as either guest or host; those good but temporary roles had transformed into friendship, membership, kinship.
A few weeks ago I learned that JR had been placed on hospice care, and not long after came the news of his death. I am confident that when JR woke at the side of his Savior, he heard the saints in prayer and joined right in. It is a sweet thing to think that when it is my time to join that merry company, JR will be one of the hosts ready to welcome me.
This warmed my heart. What a stunning reminder of what we are called to as believers!
This is beautiful, Bethany - the kind of relationship you are called to seek and nurture. I am learning so much about hospitality through you. Thank you.