Day 6- we are halfway through the She Reads Truth study on hospitality. Keep following along with me!
The islanders showed us unusual kindness. They built a fire and welcomed us all because it was raining and cold.
– Acts 28:2
Text: Acts 27:39-28:10
In this passage of Scripture, we find Paul on a boat full of prisoners and soldiers bound for Rome. During the journey, they are caught in a storm and end up shipwrecked on a unfamiliar island. Prisoners are jumping overboard to avoid being killed by the soldiers. All of the men eventually wash ashore… cold, wet, scared, and tired.
Before the townspeople had a chance to learn that the men were prisoners, they welcomed the men and showed them unusual kindness. She Reads Truth points out that…The men were cold, so they kindled a fire. They were without shelter, so the chief invited them to stay. Scripture says that he entertained them hospitably for 3 days. In kindness and love—for strangers!— he invited these men into his home, not just until daybreak, but for 3 full days. And when the group finally left, the Maltans honored them greatly and supplied them with all they needed.
The lesson we see here is that Sometimes hospitality goes beyond invitation. Sometimes it is simply a love that meets and exceeds real needs with peculiar and abnormal kindness.
But what does that look like?
Meeting the basic needs of others can include preparing food, providing lodging, giving physical protection, sharing material possessions, offering a place of rest, extending love and encouragement, sharing the gospel and spiritual teaching or encouragement and so on. But, as the study suggests, meeting needs of others can involve a giving away of our time, space, and stuff. We will be asked to sacrifice. Extending true hospitality may not be convenient, expected, or even common, but as followers of Christ, we aren’t called to be common. We are called to unusual kindness and love.
Jesus said, “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil” (Luke 6:35, ESV).
…and in this process, we will be storing up treasures in heaven rather than on this moth infested earth.