By Phoebe Farag Mikhail

Read to the end to learn more about how to win a signed giveaway copy of Invited by Leslie Verner!

If you’ve read my book or this blog, you’ll note that I’ve been sharing a lot about hospitality, a practice that leads to joy and real community. When I learned that Leslie Verner of the blog Scraping Raisins was coming out with a book just focused on hospitality, I jumped at the chance to spread the word about it. In Invited: The Power of Hospitality in an Age of Loneliness, Leslie shares what she has learned about hospitality through her own travels to different countries and her experiences with different cultures. She understands hospitality the way I do: “less about entertaining and more about becoming a good neighbor.”

If you are exploring ideas for how to open your doors to hospitality, but are hesitant or even afraid, this is the book for you. So many of us hesitate to open our doors because we are afraid that people might see us for who we really are. But as Verner writes, “You do it because doing life together means not hiding behind closed doors but inviting people into your actual life. And your actual life is not pretty. It’s not organized, perfect or pristine.” Mine is not any of those things at any time, but the invited guest rarely needs “organized, perfect, or pristine.” The guest needs community, connection, love – and so do I.

In experiencing the hospitality of others in different cultures, Verner is able to see a clear challenge to hospitality in the West. “…Individualism is the silent, lethal undertow luring the North American church away from the shore of genuine community.” This individualism, which is a cultural exception in an otherwise “collectivist” world, can often cause us to leave little room not just in our homes but in our time and our schedules for hospitality and authentic connection with our neighbors.

Verner shares some beautiful stories, both of inviting and being invited, during her life abroad in China, but moreso in her everyday life in Colorado with young children, where she learns more about the importance of staying where she is and investing in the community she’s in. In my book I write about finding out who is traveling alone, and in Invited, Verner points out an astounding statistic – seventy-five percent of international students in the United States will never enter an American home during all the years of their study! I’m already starting to think about all the international students I encountered while tutoring at a nearby university, and what a visit in a home would mean for them.

Verner’s book opened my eyes to another perspective I will be thinking about for a while: hospitality towards my own children. She points out that “Our children live with us temporarily until they find their home in the world. Do I show them the same respect and hospitality I show non-family members?” I haven’t considered this perspective on children before, but it’s a beautiful one. When we practice hospitality, our homes need to be welcoming places to our children first and foremost so that they can be welcoming places for others.

I have a SIGNED copy of Invited to share with one of my readers! To enter the giveaway, subscribe to my email newsletter and then comment below about why hospitality is important to you. You can also head over to my Instagram, follow and make a comment on my post, and tag a friend! US and Canada addresses only please; giveaway closes on Monday, August 19th at 11:49 pm EST.

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