The Widow's Spare Room

In 1987, Margaret Hollis of Birmingham, England, cleared out her back bedroom and placed a single twin mattress on the floor. She told her pastor she wanted to host one refugee family for a few weeks — just until they found proper housing. She asked God for the courage to welcome strangers into her home.

That spare room never stayed empty. Over the next twenty-three years, Margaret housed 147 asylum seekers from fourteen countries. What began as one mattress became a network of forty-two host families across the West Midlands, a legal aid clinic staffed by volunteer solicitors, and a language school that met every Tuesday in the church basement. When Margaret died in 2010, three of her former guests had become British citizens who themselves were hosting new arrivals in their own spare rooms.

Margaret never asked for any of that. She asked for courage to help one family. She imagined a few weeks of awkward dinners and broken English. She could not have conceived of a movement that would reshape her entire community's posture toward the stranger.

That is the mathematics of Ephesians 3:20. We bring God our modest calculations — one room, one mattress, one small yes — and He multiplies beyond anything we could ask or imagine. His power does not simply meet our requests. It shatters the ceiling of our imagination and builds something we never had the capacity to dream.