Mission Devotional Day 4
Who loves the strangers
Mission Devotional Day 4
READ: Deuteronomy 10:17-22
In this powerful text from Deuteronomy, God asserts that he executes justice for the orphan and widow and loves strangers. It is God “who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear.”
Isn’t it interesting that amidst the giving and restating of the Law (the word Torah might better be translated “instruction”), God reveals that he has a special concern for those in society who are particularly vulnerable? Amidst the exhortations to fear the Lord God and to worship him alone comes this practical, one might even say mundane, reminder. Or is it mundane? Moses reminds the people of their dependence upon the Lord. In fact, they depended daily upon God for food. They had lived as strangers in the land of Egypt and prayed for daily bread as they wandered in the wilderness. Moses calls them to remember what that was like as they care for the strangers in their midst.
There is a tendency in the church today to falsely divide mission into a focus on proclamation or on caring for those in need at the margins of society. We will see more of this false division in the cries of the prophets who understand the crucial connection between right-believing and right-acting.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
The teaching about strangers suggests that things that are important to God should be important to us, too. How is your congregation discerning how to serve others in need?
Has God given you a special “burden” for a group that is struggling with life on the edges of our society? How are you discerning ways that you can help?
PRAYER
Dear God, give me eyes to see the last and the least and the lost around me. Help me to remember your special concern for those who are weak and taken for granted. Show me how I can serve them. Amen.