BEING A STRANGER

It’s an uncomfortable feeling being a stranger in a strange land. It can be daunting not knowing the people, the customs, or even the language. But what a different it makes when you find someone willing to invite you in and make you feel like you belong. What a difference a friend makes! At a time in history where much of our world and even our nation is shouting out “watch out for strangers!” or “stranger = danger”, we as God’s people are called to be people of hospitality. 

LOVERS OF STRANGERS

We are called literally to be “lovers of strangers.” As people of God, we are led to follow the example of a hospitable God. In Leviticus 19:33, God told his people to love strangers. Why? Because they had been strangers in Egypt themselves and God loved them! Isn’t God in his very nature hospitable? Don’t we see in his character that he is the ultimate “lover of strangers?” And don’t we see in the example of Christ one who loved strangers, the outcast and those in need? Didn’t he give his all to save them and to make them part of his family?

CAUGHT UP IN LOVE

So, when we think about hospitality let’s not get caught up in the trap of guilt thinking, “Well, it is a command! I have to do it! I have to have people in my home!” Let us much more be caught up in the love of father who reached out to the pig pen to rescue a lost son, a savior who reached through the barriers of race, religion and gender to meet the needs of a woman at the end of her rope, and the love of a brother who gave his all to make sure that we “are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his own household . . .”It may mean opening your home to people who are “strange” to you, or it may mean giving a “cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple.” (Matt. 10:42)

We are called by the very heart of God and the heart of his Son to be lovers of strangers. Shouldn’t our hospitality also be a natural outpouring of our Christian character?