Cleaning for guests

My son is having a party tonight. Several of his friends from his drama club have come over. I am sitting here now listening to the noise of enjoyment and resting because we did a lot to get the house ready for his friends. I usually have a routine that I follow during the week for regular cleaning and after the weekend our house gets pretty messy but today we needed to do a lot of cleaning before our guests came.

I certainly wanted to involve my son in this process, well, because one it is his party and two because he needs to realize that we put our best foot forward when we have guests over. I don't want to get prideful over our home and what we have and look at us kind of thing. That is not the reason for parties. Parties are had because we want to enjoy our friends and want to have them around and enjoy them.

Not too long ago a woman told me she was going to stop cleaning her house when she had company because she did not want to seem prideful and have her guests spending more time looking at her home than enjoying each others company. I thought about that and wondered if that is actually best. When cleaning our home prior to the arrival of guests we are showing hospitality and showing love and consideration for them.

We won't always have opportunity to clean our home before guests knock on our door but if we have the opportunity I feel it does show that we care for them enough to pick things up off of the floor, to sweep, hang our clothes up and put out a few snacks.

Having a routine of cleaning our home can the need to do a rush of cleaning when guests are coming. We are then prepared and able to open our home and show love and hospitality as our Lord has requested of us.