Hebrews 13:1-16
Be Still: Holy Spirit, please speak to me today and help me listen well to what you want to say. I give you my attention now. Amen
Read: Hebrews 13:1-16
Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. (v1-2)
Encounter: There are things in life that we just ‘know’ – such as ‘the earth revolves around the sun’ or ‘we only use 10% of our brains’ or ‘mice like cheese’. These facts amongst many others, are commonly held beliefs: some more scientifically proven than others. Though we consider these ideas to be true, they probably don’t change our lives or our behaviour in any meaningful way. For many people the idea of faith falls into this category: an idea or a philosophy that might make us feel a bit better about ourselves but doesn’t in any true sense change what we do. To those people faith stays in the realm of ‘thinking’ not ‘doing’.
But the Bible makes it clear again and again that our faith is a lived-out faith, one to be wrestled with, done in the everyday stuff of life, by ordinary men and women. There’s not one Bible for the ‘thinkers’ and one for the ‘doers’ – we are all called to outwork what we believe. It’s why the first commandment is to ‘Love the Lord your God’ and the second commandment is ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’.
Apply: One of our church's values is ‘Generosity’, which is not just about giving financially, although we are certainly called to do that; it is about generosity with our time, our resources, our energy, our hospitality, our homes, our thinking, our creativity.
And this generosity is not to be offered only towards those who can repay in kind.
The passage reminds us that, yes, we need to love our family well (including our church family!) but that love should extend beyond those who are near or easy to love. It extends to strangers, to enemies, to the persecuted or mistreated, to those who are in prison, to outsiders… What act of generous kindness or hospitality could you do today?
Devote: Lord, would you speak to me about something practical and actual that I can do today to honour you and show that I hear your Word – and want to live it out.