This new book by Andi Ashworth and Charlie Peacock is simply excellent. If you don’t know who they are, Andi is the author of Real Love for Real Life, which I reviewed here. Charlie is a Grammy Award-winning music producer and recording artist. Together they founded The Art House in Nashville where they welcomed everyone interested in art, creativity, community, flourishing, humanness, and faith.
They are dear friends—full disclosure: we are mentioned in the book—and have demonstrated what it means to be discerning followers of Jesus seeking to be faithful under his Lordship across all of life and culture. Learning from them as they reflect back on lives of life-affirming ministry, hospitality, beauty, and learning is simply a delight.
Why Everything is written as a series of letters; and though each chapter is written with certain folks in mind, they all apply to all of us. Each contain nuggets of insight, hard won wisdom that shed light into the shadows and questions we all have.
A few examples from Charlie:
“On Becoming a Light in the City: To the Concerned Citizen.”
“The Artist’s Role in the World: To the Artist and the Artful.”
“Dangling Over the Cliff and Other Dangers: To the Sick and Suffering.”
A few examples from Andi:
“A Legacy of Shelter: To Those Who Long to Love a Place and Use It Well.”
“Why No Part is Too Small to Matter: To Those Who need Reminding of the Greatness of Small Things.”
“Knowing When It’s Time to Move: To Those Considering a Big Change.”
Why Everything That Doesn’t Matter, Matters so Much: The Way of Love in a World of Hurt is personal, inspiring, deeply human, and simultaneously practical and wise. Andi and Charlie welcome us into their hearts and lives, helping us learn what they’ve learned, even from their mistakes. The book, for those with eyes to see, is shaped by a consistently biblical worldview that celebrates Jesus as Lord and seeks to see everything in the light of the empty tomb.
Here is Andi reflecting on hospitality, which is both central and essential to Christian faithfulness in our world of loneliness, individuality, and social isolation.
Hospitality is one of the most beautifully countercultural practices we can live and learn because it’s such a powerful communicator of love. In a world often exhausting, lonely, and isolating, where we can have a lot of social media “friends” and “followers,” we still long for the intimacy of knowing and being known in our real, embodied lives. Hospitality is unexpected and surprising…
In responding to my callings as they developed, I learned to welcome people in all of these ways—to cook for them, prepare guest rooms, sit in long conversations, turn from other work to receive an unexpected person, and help host the occasional larger gathering featuring theologians, writers, teachers, actors, and musicians. Our work was artist-centric, but most of the gatherings were for anyone who wanted to explore what artful, faithful life might mean for them…
We often had people in our home for weeks at a time without a break. When that happened and my negative thoughts and attitudes confronted me, I had to go back to the gospel again and again. I needed a right theology deeply planted in my mind and heart, reminding me that my standing is in grace and my acceptance comes through Christ alone, not through my performance.
If you practice hospitality enough, in will begin to look like everyday life, not perfection. True, biblical hospitality is born of grace—grace for the giver and grace for the receiver. The words of Jesus in Matthew 25 always bring me back to the essentials: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in… Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (v. 35, 40).
Dear reader, as you think on these things, know that you will never run out of opportunities to meet those basic needs in your own households and neighborhoods, on the streets of your city, and across the world. These scriptures have a wide application. The message is clear that even the smallest act of caring for another human being in a life-giving way is an enormous expression of love to God himself. It’s about meeting human need where we find it, and we find it in the life God gives us…
With hospitality as with life, seasons change and we adjust. The topic expands and we grow. Hospitality is big enough to extend across a lifetime, and small enough to elevate a simple cup of tea and conversation into something important. The needs we come across, including our own, will guide us. Whether sharing a meal or an afternoon or providing a bed for the night, there’s a time for everything. A time to offer and a time to rest, a time for family and a time for strangers, a time to refresh others and a time to be refreshed. [p. 100-112]
When Margie and I first heard Francis Schaeffer speak of Jesus Christ as Lord over all of life and culture, it was a life-changing and life-affirming moment. He insisted that if you take all of created reality, separate out evil and sin (the best list has ten points), the rest is not only of spiritual value, it’s of equal spiritual value. This means we please God by being human, faithful to his calling in all the details of the ordinary and routines of our lives. In Why Everything That Doesn’t Matter, Matters So Much: The Way of Love in a World of Hurt, Charlie and Andi lets us into their hearts, lives, and home to see what that looks like.
Photo credit: The author with his iPhone.
