Come, Lord Jesus, Be Our Guest

Getting an Apartment in Chicago

Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?” That’s exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t make it easy for himself by avoiding people’s troubles, but waded right in and helped out. “I took on the troubles of the troubled,” is the way Scripture puts it.” [Romans 15:2-3 MSG]

I should have known when I first met Mim and she said I could move into her apartment that weekend, that my life was about to change. What kind of person invites someone to come and live with them after a mere ten minutes of talking? True, our first meeting was at a Bible study, and I was a friend of the pastor’s wife, but that’s still pretty risky hospitality. She said I could live with her until I found an apartment of my own. That was almost forty years ago. We’re still living together.
I had just accepted a job as an editorial researcher for The World Book Encyclopedia, located in downtown Chicago. I was staying with a friend and her husband for a few days while I looked for a place to live. The husband was a seminary student and assistant pastor of a small Chicago church. I tagged along with them to a Bible Study one evening.
After the Bible Study, Mim (short for Miriam) Jacobson came over to introduce herself to me and find out who I was. When she learned that I had a new job and would be moving to Chicago, she offered to let me stay with her in her apartment until I found a place of my own. Her only stipulation was that we had to go to the Buffalo Ice Cream Parlor for cheeseburgers and hot fudge sundaes to discuss the ground rules before I actually moved into the apartment.
We went to the Buffalo the next evening. Basically, there were three rules: one, no wild parties; two, no men overnight; and three, I had to take the bottom bunk in her one-bedroom apartment. I drove home to Wisconsin the next day, Saturday, packed my things, and drove to Mim’s apartment on Sunday. I started work at World Book on Monday.
That’s how my “Adventures in Hospitality” really began. Having grown up in a conservative Christian family on a farm in Wisconsin, I knew all about the importance of treating people with kindness. One of the first Bible verses I had memorized as a child was “Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:32 – back in the 1950’s it was customary for Methodists to memorize the King James Version, which, of course, was the real Bible.)
Treating friends (or even people I don’t know) with kindness, and inviting complete strangers to live with me in my own home, were two different things. I wasn’t sure the Bible really told me to invite strangers into my home. Mim was about to teach me otherwise. Mim was taking the verse in Romans quite literally.

Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?”
[Romans 15:2 MSG]

This marked the beginning of many “Adventures in Hospitality.”