The Gospel Comes With A House Key by Rosaria Butterfield (Review)

The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World by Rosaria Butterfield is a must read. This book takes you into Rosaria's life of love, fear, faith, and pain. You hear about her childhood and children, her neighbors and strangers. How do you practice hospitality while dealing with aging parents? How do you care for your neighbors and draw boundaries? How do you deal with your sin and the sins of others? Rosaria doesn't answer all of our questions, but she shares her life with its faults and victories. The book encouraged my soul, and I hope it will make yours as well. 

ENDORSEMENTS

“God strongly advances his cause by raising up prophetic voices of fresh insight, bold words, and powerful impact. Rosaria Butterfield is just such a voice for God in our time. The Gospel Comes with a House Key is Rosaria’s heart reaching out to our hearts, calling us to love our neighbors with sacrificial hospitality. This book is going to shake us all up in the most wonderfully destabilizing way.”

―Ray Ortlund, Lead Pastor, Immanuel Church, Nashville, Tennessee

“One cannot spend any time at all with Rosaria Butterfield without a renewed sense of how good the good news really is. This book is a needed call to the church to model the hospitality of our Lord. As our culture faces a crisis of loneliness, this is the book we need. The book will inspire you and leave you with a notebook filled with ideas for how to practically engage your neighbors with the welcome of the gospel.”

―Russell D. Moore, President, The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention

“Artfully woven into the fabric of who we are, each of us possesses an urgency to be included, an ache to be known, and a longing to be welcomed. In this book, Rosaria describes how the good news of the gospel not only meets our deepest needs but transforms us into cohosts who invite others to meet Jesus. Rosaria Butterfield’s enthusiasm for the unparalleled expression of hospitality―the Son of God on the cross drawing all men to himself―is what energizes her to practice radically ordinary hospitality and invite us all to do the same. This book will stir your imagination to generate creative ways to incorporate radically ordinary hospitality into your own life as well.”

―Gloria Furman, author, Missional Motherhood and Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full

QUOTES

• Practicing radically ordinary hospitality necessitates building margin time into the day, time where regular routines can be disrupted but not destroyed. This margin stays open for the Lord to fill—to take an older neighbor to the doctor, to babysit on the fly, to make room for a family displaced by a flood or a worldwide refugee crisis.
• Leprosy was no metaphor. It was real as rain.
• We need to stop asking what Jesus our imaginary friend would do and start facing the deep shadow of the cross, because there at the cross we see what Jesus did do and how God provided the way of escape at his expense and for our blessing.
• But what about Judas Iscariot? Does he get a house key too?
• Jesus died for the truth. Are we willing to live for it?