As the final FIFA World Cup crowds begin to drift home, I find myself feeling unexpectedly grateful.
Not because Seattle was perfect. It wasn’t… we weren’t.
Not because we solved homelessness, transportation, affordability, or the thousand complexities that come with welcoming hundreds of thousands of visitors.
But because, for a few remarkable weeks, our city remembered something about itself.
Seattle really tried to be a good host.
And I am proud of us—not in a triumphalist way, not in a Seattle-is-better-than-anywhere-else way, but proud of us as a city, as a people, as a community daring, however imperfectly, to practice a different imagination. Proud that we could glimpse, even for a moment, the kind of world we long for: a world where nations arrive not as enemies, where languages mingle without fear, where public life becomes a table instead of a battlefield, and where welcome is not scarcity but abundance. For a few weeks, we practiced the dream. And I want us to keep practicing.
There is something profoundly sacred about hospitality.
Long before hotels and tourism bureaus, before passports and border crossings, hospitality was a spiritual practice. In the biblical imagination, welcoming the stranger was never simply good manners—it was one of the primary ways people encountered G-d. Again and again, Scripture reminds us that we meet the Holy One disguised as strangers, travelers, foreigners, and neighbors we have not yet learned to love.
Watching volunteers greet visitors in dozens of languages, transit workers helping confused travelers navigate the city, restaurants extending welcome, neighborhoods filling with songs from every continent—I couldn’t help but wonder:
What if this is who we actually are?
Not merely during an international sporting event.
But always.
Seattle has often been described as reserved. The “Seattle Freeze” has become part of our mythology. Yet over these past weeks I witnessed something warmer. I saw a city smiling a little more. Making room. Practicing patience. Choosing curiosity over suspicion.
For a brief season, our city remembered that every face carries a story.
Perhaps that is one of the hidden gifts of global gatherings. They interrupt our tendency to imagine the world as “out there.” Suddenly the world arrives on our sidewalks, rides our buses, drinks coffee beside us, cheers beside us, and reminds us that humanity is far more beautiful—and wonderfully diverse—than our daily routines often allow us to notice.
As someone who writes and teaches about the Jesus Way, I couldn’t help but hear echoes of Jesus’ own vision. A table large enough for everyone. A neighborhood where strangers become neighbors. A city whose greatness is measured not by its skyline or economic output, but by its capacity to welcome.
I am proud of Seattle.
Not because we are exceptional, but because we aspired toward something beautiful: that people arriving from around the globe might leave saying, “They made us feel at home.”
In a world increasingly shaped by fear, nationalism, exclusion, and suspicion of the stranger, hospitality itself becomes a quiet act of resistance.
Perhaps our role in the World Cup is over. But the opportunity remains.
Tomorrow another immigrant will move into the apartment down the street. Another refugee family will arrive at the airport. Another international student will step onto a university campus. Another tourist will ask for directions. Another lonely neighbor will wonder whether anyone notices them.
The tournament may end. The calling does not.
May Seattle continue to become the kind of city where strangers find friends, where difference is received as gift rather than threat, and where hospitality is not an event strategy but a way of life.
Because in the end, the most beautiful city is not the one with the loudest stadiums or the tallest buildings.
It is the one where people from every nation can glimpse—even if only for a moment—what home feels like.
Thank you, Seattle.
May this not be the end of your welcome, but another beginning.
Peace, dwight
