Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay. [1 Peter 4:9 (NLT)]
For a Christian, being hospitable should be second nature but, for many, the thought of entertaining is terrifying. Entertaining, however, has nothing to do with hospitality. One has to do with cuisine, attire, atmosphere, and possessions, and says “Look what I have,” while the other has to do with love, respect, sharing, refreshment, and comfort and says, “What I have is yours!” One is meant to impress and the other is meant to bless.
The difference between entertaining and hospitality can be seen in a family friend whose Christmas dinners always consisted of a house full of friends and family who ate buckets of fried chicken and the trimmings using paper plates and plastic utensils all of which came from the Kentucky Colonel’s kitchen. While Martha Stewart may not have approved, this woman’s friends and family certainly did because it was about the people not the party! There may not have been Lenox china and linen napkins but there was plenty of love and laughter! We can be entertained lavishly and never feel welcome as happened to Jesus at the Simon the Pharisee’s or, like Elijah at the widow’s, we can be given the smallest morsel from a welcoming host and know faith and love.
Back in 2016, when the east coast of Florida was threatened by Hurricane Matthew, people fled to the Gulf side to escape the storm. Every hotel room here was occupied and the shelters were full. While working over coffee at Starbucks, our new pastor overheard a family of four talking. Evacuees from Miami, they’d arrived at their hotel only to discover that it was overbooked. The pastor tried to continue his work while they anxiously called around in search of a vacancy; there were no rooms anywhere. With all their belongings stuffed tightly in the car and barely enough space to sit (let alone sleep), they wondered what they’d do for lodging. The young pastor was less than a week in town and his small condo still was filled with boxes not yet emptied. He had a sermon to write and a long list of things that needed to get done. Nevertheless, he listened to the Holy Spirit’s voice and introduced himself to the family. Explaining that he and his wife didn’t have much room, he offered what little they did have. The mother’s first response was, “Thank God. Our prayers have been answered!”
God has a delightful sense of humor, proven by the fact that the pastor’s guests turned out to be a rabbi and his family! That family got more than just a carry-out pizza and a place to rest their weary heads—they got an evening filled with Christian hospitality, spirited conversation, and prayer. United by their love of God and a shared belief in what we call the Old Testament and they call the Hebrew Bible, the two families had much in common. When the storm passed and they departed, the Jewish rabbi invited the evangelical Christian minister to visit his family and join him at temple.
Welcoming family, friends, and even strangers in our homes and to our tables is far more important than where they sleep, whatever is put on their plates, or the kind of plates that are used. Anything prepared and shared with love is a worthy gift for all who enter our homes. If an angel comes to the door, we don’t want to turn him or her away just because the house isn’t tidy or we don’t have the makings of a gourmet meal. After all, there’s always the Colonel with his barrel of chicken!
Today, when someone is called the “salt of the earth,” the speaker probably means he or she is a dependable, unpretentious and honest person—someone of moral integrity. That is well and good as far as it goes, but Jesus meant more than that when He called us to be “the salt of the earth.”
Eighteen years after the kingdom divided and Jeroboam became king of the northern kingdom of Israel, Rehoboam’s son Abijah became king of Judah, the southern kingdom. As Solomon’s grandson and David’s great-grandson, Abijah was part of David’s dynasty; Jeroboam was not. Although 1 Kings called Abijah a sinner, 2 Chronicles recorded the one highpoint of his short reign. War broke out between Israel and Judah and Judah’s warriors were outnumbered two to one. As the two kings squared off, Abijah shouted out to Jeroboam and his army. Referring to the “covenant of salt” between God and David, Abijah called Jeroboam a traitor, his men scoundrels, and charged Israel with rebellion against the Lord’s chosen Davidic dynasty of kings. Their rebellion hadn’t been against Solomon or Rehoboam; they’d rebelled against the kingdom of the Lord! Continuing with his tirade, Abijah charged the northern kingdom with apostasy because of their idolatry and illegitimate priests. After pointing to Judah’s faithful worship, he warned Israel they would not succeed because God was with Judah. Indeed, in spite of overwhelming odds, Scripture tells us “God routed Jeroboam and all Israel” and the Judeans were victorious because they “relied on the Lord, the God of their ancestors.”
When talking with my husband about the story of Jonah, he said that the fish story was a “little too hard to swallow”— too incredible to believe. Miracles! The Bible is full of them and, since they are supernatural events, they’re all hard to accept as true. Improbability is the nature of miracles. Along with the fish saving Jonah, the story is filled with other miracles: the immediate calming of the storm once Jonah was thrown in the sea, the deliverance of the prophet from the fish safely onto the beach, Nineveh’s immediate repentance, the appointment of the plant, worm and scorching east wind as teaching tools, and even God’s revelation of Himself directly to Jonah! Yet, if we believe the Bible is God-breathed and without error, we don’t have the privilege of picking and choosing which miracles we will believe and which ones we won’t. We have only one choice to make—all or none!
When I came across this revised version of the 23rd Psalm, I was sure it was written by a cynic as a way of mocking God, Christianity, and many of today’s popular evangelists. Imagine my surprise when I learned that it was written in all seriousness by Charles Fillmore, the founder of Unity, a church within the New Thought movement. The “revised” psalm was published in Fillmore’s book Prosperity in 1938. Although we may associate the beginnings of prosperity or “health and wealth” theology with televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Bakker in the 1970s, the movement began in the late 19th century. Sadly, in one form or another, it still is preached today.
Devotions of the Heart 