“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” — Hebrews 13:2
The hardest, holiest part of running a cafe is not the coffee. It is the door. Whoever walks through it — the regular, the lost tourist, the man who has been sleeping rough, the executive on her lunch break, the friend in tears — that is the ministry.
The book of Hebrews assumes we will be tempted to forget this. Hospitality is uncomfortable. It costs time, attention, sometimes patience we do not have. We forget because it is easier to.
And yet. The writer says: be careful. Some have entertained angels unaware. Translation: you do not know who is standing in front of you. The face of a stranger may be a delivery from God.
This sentence has changed how I see the morning queue. Every person at our bar is, in some sense, sent. Our job is not to size them up. Our job is to receive them as guests, and to do so with the warmth that the gospel itself has shown to us.
A cup of coffee can be a sacrament — a small visible thing that makes a great invisible thing real. When we pour with care, we are saying: you matter, you are seen, you are welcome here. That is not a small gospel. It might be the whole of it.
Tomorrow, do not just serve. Welcome.
Soli Deo Gloria — To God alone be the glory.
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