Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to
strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without
knowing it. (Hebrews 13:1-2)
This verse has some
really scary implications. If I read the verse correctly, they might show up
anywhere and we won’t recognize them. What if they’ve got brown skin and cross
the Rio Grande at night because that’s how they like to travel? What if they’re
black, look 85 years old, haven’t had a drivers license for twenty years and
they show up to vote like they have for years, and you turn them away because
you changed the law?
What if they lived in Baghdad and you bombed them because,
well you could. Or were living among the poor of Haiti and you went on TV and
said the earthquake was God’s judgment on that country? Or they were
ministering to the poor in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina and you laid
that God’s judgment thing on them again?
Worse yet, what if that panhandler who asked me for two
bucks a while back, and I turned him down even though I had it because I knew
he’d just spend it on booze, what if he was an angel and had just misplaced his
ID? Really, I hate that verse, not because I don’t agree with it, but because I’m
so damn bad at it.
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