21st. September 2020. Daily Devotion.
17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. 18 He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. 19 And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. 20 Fear the Lord your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. 21 He is your praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. 22 Your ancestors who went down into Egypt were seventy in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky. ~ Deuteronomy 10:17-22
In the old versions of the Bible, the term “stranger” here imperfectly translates the persons to whom the commandment applies. To the Hebrews, a stranger was a person of another race or culture who lived, or sought to live, among them; what we would call a “Gentile.” In other words, the quote means “love the foreigner living among you.” Some Bibles, in fact, replace the word “stranger” with the phrase “foreigner living among you.” Throughout the Old Testament there was a tension between keeping this commandment and avoiding mixing with other groups and who worshipped other gods, but Jesus commanded love of neighbour in its broadest sense when he told the parable of the good Samaritan.
We live in an age of increasing suspicion of strangers and foreigners. God has always called his people to be compassionate towards foreigners and newcomers, and in Jesus Christ it is our duty also to do so. It does not mean we change and adopt their ways, but it does mean that we honour their humanity and their right to a place in our global society.
Lord, let me always treat foreigners living in my community with love. Amen.
To Focus on God
I am so sorry, Lord, that I let the worries of the day push ahead of you in my mind. Please help me to keep your Holy Spirit in the forefront of my thoughts, throughout the day. Amen
To Serve Christ
Dearest Lord, teach me to be generous;
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
To give and not to count the cost,
To fight and not heed the wounds,
To toil and not seek for rest,
To labour and not to seek reward,
Save that of knowing that I do your will. Amen. ~ adapted from a prayer of St. Ignatius Loyola (Catholic), 1540
For sufferers of the pandemic
God our refuge, shelter us under your wings as we kneel before you in grief and pain. We pray for all those who have lost a beloved child, parent, sibling, lover, or friend . . . those who have witnessed horror . . . those who are wounded in body or spirit . . . for each is a child made in your image. We pray for ourselves, O Lord. Restore our hope, and mend our hearts, even as we weep with grief and tremble with anger. Give us strength to support the broken hearted, your grace to be confident in your presence here, and your light to find our way through the shadows, that we may be bearers of your light to all we encounter; in the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.
