"Do not neglect
to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained
angels without knowing it." - Hebrews 13:2
"Do not be
afraid." This is the most common
command from God in Scripture. Not the greatest or most important - love is
obviously the greatest and I think (if we must rank them) that "repent and
believe in the good news" might be more important. So, if the command against fear is not the
greatest and if it's (arguably) not the most important, why does it occur so
often?
The easy answer, of
course, is that we are easily frightened.
And most of us are pretty good at hiding it - we like to cover up our
fear with self-confidence, stubborn certainty, a lot of possessions, etc. Fear is not always a bad thing and it can
keep us from getting ourselves in trouble.
The problem is that we have a tendency to be ruled by our fear. We let it dictate how we live and who we
love, who we serve and to whom we show hospitality.
While there are
certainly times to exercise caution and hospitality does not mean letting
people take advantage of us or putting ourselves or our loved ones in harm's
way, there are times when we are reluctant to show hospitality to strangers
because our fear of hypothetical 'what if' scenarios carries more weight with
us than Jesus' command to love our neighbors and God's repeated command that we
not be afraid. These 'what if' scenarios
are really powerful, but pay attention to the fact that Jesus doesn't leave us
any wiggle room in his command for us to love our neighbor. There's no "unless" in the greatest
commandment.
"Love your
neighbor, unless they have been mean to you…"
"Love your
neighbor, unless they are a different religion…"
"Love your
neighbor, unless they have a lifestyle that you disagree with…"
"Love your
neighbor, unless there's some hypothetical scenario that makes you afraid of
doing so…"
It's difficult and
sometimes it's inconvenient for me to do so (even anxiety-producing), but the
command is pretty clear. I'm thinking
that I've got a ways to go and a lot of repenting to do during this season of
Lent…
1 comment:
Don't you love it when things all seem to come together. Last night, when you shared that John Wesley said the first sin was unbelief. I started wondering. I've never thought of the word belief before. So I looked up "be" and "lief". According to Merriam the two parts mean "to have" "beloved". So if the first sin was to not have love and Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love. I guess it really takes thousands of pages of examples and we still don't get it. Maybe ine step at a time we can keep spreading it though.
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