Welcome the Stranger

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. I'm Mike Whitmer and I titled our reading, Welcome the Stranger. In Everything Sad is Untrue, Daniel Nayeri describes his harrowing flight with his mother and sister from persecution through a refugee camp to safety in the United States. An elderly couple agreed to sponsor them, though they didn't know them. Years later, Daniel Steele can't get over it. He writes, Can you believe that?

Totally blind, they did that. They'd never even met us. And if we turned out to be villains, they'd have to pay for it. That's almost as brave, kind and reckless as I can think of anybody being. Yet God desires us to have that level of concern for others. In Leviticus 19, he told Israel to be kind to foreigners.

Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. In Ephesians 2, he reminds Gentile believers in Jesus, that's many of us, that once we were separate from Christ and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. So he commands all of us former foreigners, both Jew and Gentile, to show hospitality to strangers.

Now grown up with a family of his own, Daniel praises Jim and Jean Dawson, who were so Christian that they let a family of refugees come live with them until they could find a home. God welcomes the stranger and urges us to welcome them too. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Ephesians chapter 2, verses 11 through 22. Therefore, remember that formerly, you who are Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision, which is done in the body by human hands, remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away, have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in His flesh the law with His commands and regulations.

His purpose was to create in Himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near, for through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people, and also members of His household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord, and in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, show us the stranger you want us to love. In your name we pray. Amen. Today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.