Christian Hospitality - Thank You For Being A Friend

'For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.. Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you do for Me.' Matthew 25:35-36 and 40.

A Christian brother, Kenneth Lau, shared a story which left me with a lasting impression of Christian Hospitality and its positive influence on the recipient. Kenneth was a student in the USA and he related that one wintry day he decided to go on a cycling marathon. Unfortunately as it got dark, Kenneth cycled into snow storm. Soon he could no longer go further, whereupon he chanced on a brightly lighted house. He knocked on the door to ask for shelter. 

The host warmly welcomed him, sat him by the fire to dry and then invited him to join the family's thanksgiving dinner. There was Kenneth, intruding into this Christian family thanksgiving and yet, he was received as one of them and shared a happy meal. Perhaps the most memorable for Kenneth 

When the storm subsided, Kenneth cycled back to the University. He shared with us that at that encounter his Christian faith was strengthened for he had partaken of the love of God shared by this Christian family. This incident anchored his faith in Jesus Christ.    

What a fine example of Christian hospitality so wonderfully offered to a complete stranger! 

Hospitality was a hallmark of the early Christian church, the willingness to open up their homes to others, even to strangers. This was a major factor contributing to the spread of the gospel wherein itinerant preachers were offered accommodation in the homes of the early Christian families and shared meals. The early church was obedient to Christ's teaching in Matt 25, the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. 

Hebrews 13:2 reminded, 'Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.' In 3 John 1:5 the apostle John praised his friend Gaius, "Dear friend, you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers and sisters, even though they are strangers to you."

The sharing of a meal is a commonplace practice in Asian families especially with the Chinese. This is not the easiest thing to do. It is a gift. When we extend hospitality to friends and strangers, we have to receive them in a free and friendly space in which they will not feel strange but welcomed, the same way that Kenneth was welcomed that wintry thanksgiving evening. 

So let us be willing to share our private spaces. We can invite people into our lives yet exclude them from ourselves and keep them at a distance. Discover the other person and be a true friend because     

• True friends are lasting.
• True friends are anchored by God's love.
• True friends dare to love.
• True friends provide mutual encouragement.

That's what friends are for. 

It Is Well, It Is Well With My Soul

 

'The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord makes His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.' Numbers 6:24-26

The soul is the very basis of our spirituality and humanity, it is running our entire lives. Dallas Willard wrote, 'It is the life-centre of the human being. The soul is like an inner stream, which refreshes, nourishes and gives strength to every other element of our life. When that stream flows properly, we are refreshed and content in all we do, because our soul is rooted in God and His kingdom. We are in harmony with God, reality, the rest of humanity at large.' Ref 1 

Christians always seek this wellness within our souls, our harmony with God. When we are disjointed from God, we will feel insecure. Perhaps we have done something wrong or perhaps wrong was done to us. Perhaps we are very sick or  have lost our jobs or have quarrels with friends and families. At such times we might feel resentful, angry, sad and even pity ourselves. 

The psalmist lamented 'Why my soul are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?' three times in Psalms 42 and 43 in three circumstances. The psalmist felt

• Abandoned by God (Psalm 42:3)
• Forgotten by God (Psalm 42:9)
• Rejected by God (Psalm 43:2)

These two Psalms described the desolation felt by God's people at the time of their exile.  

Someone else who would ask such a question was Horatio Spafford. Horatio Spafford suffered many calamities in his life. He lost almost all his fortune in the great Chicago fire of 1871. His four year old son died soon after. Hoping that a vacation to the United Kingdom would help his wife and four daughters recover from the tragedy, he sent them off on a trans-Atlantic voyage. However the ship capsized after a collision with another vessel. More than 200 people lost their lives including all four of Horatio's daughters. His wife, Anna, survived and upon reaching England sent a telegram to her husband that began, "Saved Alone. What shall I do?" 

Horatio immediately set sail for England deep in sorrow and heavy-hearted. As Horatio's ship passed the spot where the shipwreck occurred, he thought of his daughters but God comforted him. Somehow he was inspired to write the words of this hymn, It is well with my Soul.

When peace like a river attendeth my way

When trouble like sea billows roll

 Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say 

It is well, it is well with my soul. 

How could a man who suffered such grief write these words? Horatio Spafford is a remarkable man. A lesser man would have wallowed in remorse and pity, even to the point of blaming God for the lost of five children. It must have been a very painful moment to stand gazing at the Atlantic Ocean over the very spot where his four daughters died. But Horatio was not such a man, his Christian faith and belief in God sustained him through this terrible ordeal. Horatio survived with his soul intact, still able to inspire many generations of sufferers through the most severe of challenges and to say that whatever the pain, it is still well with the soul. The same awakening and realisation also dawned on Anna, Horatio's wife. Their lives thereafter became a testimony of unstinting faith and service, and these examples were passed on through many generations. The human spirit can rise above tragedy.

What then is wellness of the soul? It is the right combination of personality, temperament and character in a person that accords self confidence, contentment and peace. It is being at a place of a right relationship with God. A form of godliness with contentment which St Paul advocated to Timothy, 'godliness with contentment is great gain.' 1 Timothy 6:6. The outward manifestations of such a wellness is holiness and happiness.

A 'poetic' description of such a person is found in Psalm 1:3, 'That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yield its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.' I considered words to describe the characteristics of such a contented person and came up with 

• Godly
• Christlike
• Gentle
• Measured
• Merciful
• Charitable
• Reverent
• Compassionate
• Confident
• Benevolent
• Forgiving
• Gracious

If only some of these words were to describe us, we will be truly blessed. In all circumstances we will have the assurance that God is with us.   

Lionel

Ref 1: Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, Inter-varsity Press, 2002

Not Fake But Authentic

' But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness  and respect, keeping a clear conscience, keeping a clear conscience.' 1 Peter 3:15-16

 

We used to rely on the newspapers to give us news and opinions but now we are very skeptical of what we read in the newspapers or hear on the TV. It is ridiculous, even appalling, that in a world of the Internet we would mistrust the readily available information offered to us. Where is authenticity, integrity and credibility?

The Christian community is not spared from this question. Non-Christians often see us as hypocrites because they see that the profession of our faith does not commensurate with our behaviour, conduct and character. Our walk does not fit our talk. In the face of an increasingly insincere and hypocritical world, inclusive of the church, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount challenges us to a lifestyle that is completely and radically different. This sermon which is recorded for us by Matthew in his chapters 5 to 7 is a call for us to move from superficial, shallow and “plastic” religiosity to a sincere, authentic and practical faith. The sermon looks at us, the church, the people of God and instructs a paradigm change in our thinking and behavior. Time and again, Jesus stated the way things were and then offered a change in conduct and attitude. He used the phrase, “You have heard….but I say to you.” 

So Jesus in Matthew 6:1-18 told us to cut out the play-acting, the hypocrisy and get down to genuine and authentic behaviour. There are 2 lessons for us:

a. The World is not a stage – Don’t Play Act. The root word for hypocrisy is 'play acting.' This is how Jesus described hypocrites, play actors. He said “Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you do not make a performance out of it. It might be good theatre, but the God who made you won’t be applauding.” (Peterson – The Message). Churches turn away far more people from Christ than winning them for him by not ‘walking the talk.’ The non-Christians and the young Christians are quick to detect hypocrisy within the church. In contrast authentic Christianity when it is manifested never requires advertisement or publicity. Jesus taught “When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to your self, When you help someone out. Don’t think about how it looks. Just do it – quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.” The problem is that we divide our lives into two compartments – spiritual and secular. We keep our Sunday spiritual behaviour in one compartment and the rest of our lives in another. As a result we do not relate what we hear on Sunday to the way we run our businesses from Monday onwards. Very soon we will have the need to act up on Sunday, to don our Sunday best and play act.

b. Don’t demonstrate prayer – Just pray. ‘And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you,’ Matt 6:5-6.

Xian Vase

 

The Latin word for sincerity is ‘Sine cere’, which when translated literally means ‘without wax”. The Greeks spoke of being sincere as being 'sun-tested.' Fine porcelain is greatly valued and therefore expensive. Often in the making of a vase when the porcelain is fired in the kiln tiny cracks would appear if the material is of a low quality. Dishonest merchants would smear pearly white wax over the cracks, and try to pass off the lower valued stuff as fine porcelain – unless held up to the light of the sun when the cracks will become prominent.

Similarly, our cracks will appear when held up to Jesus the light of the world. When we over-demonstrate spirituality in a put-on fashion, the non-Christians are quick to notice the fault lines. Can we withstand scrutiny when we are held up to the light? What will show when our books are open?

I have struggled with this problem for many years. In the office I am noted to be a very harsh person. I am quick and sharp in meetings and have been known to be ‘brutally frank and open’. At first I thought that this was a sincere way of doing things - ‘tell it like it is.’ But there were times when I overdid myself and the words I used could be said to be offensive. The staff saw me as a very strict man. 

I am not so sure now if I was being sincere or I am just a hypocrite. A more caring and soft approach is more consistent with my ‘Sunday’ behaviour? How to be sincere without having to be brutally frank? Unless we question ourselves we cannot spot our hypocrisy. There is no better way to put up ourselves to the light that is to hold ourselves to the light of God. 

King David knew when he prayed in Ps 139 “O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD." 

There was a king who was fashionable and pompous. He liked to wear beautiful clothes. On his birthday he commissioned for himself the most beautiful outfit, one that had to befit the grand occasion of his birthday parade. But being a pompous man, he was not satisfied with any of the fabrics and designs that were shown him by the many tailors of the land. As the day of the parade approached, he still had not made up his mind and he had no new outfit to wear. One day, two tailors came to the palace. They 'showed' him a beautiful cloth supposedly made of the finest material. It was said to be dazzling in colour and texture. They told the king that the cloth was so special that only a person of the appropriate stature and ability would appreciate its beauty and subtlety. Taking advantage of the king's pride, they described the illusion so splendidly that the king, not to be outdone, joined in the charade. So did all the people at court.

On his birthday everybody remarked how beautiful and resplendent the new outfit was. The king wore his splendid new clothes and went on a parade through town. All the town people cheered and clapped and hailed. They strained their necks to see the clothes that glittered until a young boy sitting on the shoulders of his father shouted, “Look mum the emperor has no clothes on.”

In 2 Cor 5:17, we are described as new creations. 'Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has gone and the new has come.' The emperor’s new clothes were visible only to those who pretended that it was there. We may be guilty of putting on a new man that is scarcely discernable to the outside world. All of us in church clap and wave as we parade and strut about each Sunday. Perhaps it is time to cut the hypocrisy. Be authentic. 

Lionel

First published June 2007

Was blind but now I see

'For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is a gift of God.' Ephesians 2:8 

The hymn 'Amazing Grace' was the signature tune of the Evangelical Movement in the UK in the 1700s and is still very popular among Christians today. The romantic notion about its writer John Newton, was that he turned from being a captain of a slave ship to a minister of the Gospel after he was converted to Christianity. 

However, I discovered having read the book 'The Trader, the Owner, the Slave' by James Walvin (Ref 1) that this was not quite the whole  truth. In Part 1 of this book Walvin wrote of John Newton, as a slave trader, then a preacher, a hymn writer and finally an abolitionist not sequentially but concurrently. He had cut his sea-legs working in the Atlantic Slave business plying between the shores of Sierra Leone to the Caribbean islands and passing though the port of Liverpool. He became a Christian after escaping a shipwreck and was a pious Christian with an interest in theology but he continued to engage in the slave trade eventually becoming a slave ship's captain. Christians at that time probably saw nothing wrong with slavery.  

Walvin wrote, “Everyone involved in the world of Atlantic slavery, from the captains of the ships through to slave owners in America and the British-based shippers – all of them measured in their thousands, were lured by the hope of profit." But few of them seemed to have any moral or religious qualms about what they were doing. That it wreaked misery on an epic scale for untold millions barely registered among people like Newton who profited from such a business. He would discharged his human cargo, made a handsome profit, then proceeded to discuss God’s word in his cabin and stepped ashore without a scruple.

However, years later, Newton did repent. He regretted and recanted of his past and wrote Amazing Grace, a hymn of repentance, confession and testimony of a life once lost but saved by the grace of God. 

'Amazing grace

How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost

But now I'm found

Was blind, but now I see

'Twas grace that taught

My heart to fear

And grace my fears relieved

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers

Toil and snares

I have already come

'Twas grace hath brought me 

Safe thus far

And grace will lead me home

When we've been there

Ten thousand years

Bright shining as the sun

We'll have no less days

To sing God's praise

Than when we first begun'

In the 1780s, slavery had become a political issue in England. William Wilberforce having been acquainted with him sought his counsel but Newton still maintained his silence on the issue. Finally, Wilberforce persuaded him to take a public stand. In 1788, John Newton published his 'Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade' and explained, “I am bound in conscience to take shame to myself by a public confession, which, however sincere, comes too late to prevent or repair the misery and mischief to which I have, formally been an accessory.”  After this, his sermons followed the theme of “Amazing Grace”. They were laced with anecdotes of his past life and sins but with much remorse. 

Since then Christians have lived through Hitler’s Germany, the Rwandan massacre and many other such tragedies, oblivious to injustices done to their fellow men and sometimes even perpetrating them. Our Christian conscience can be blind-sighted, our behaviour laced with 'holier than thou' attitudes and our minds prepared to rationalise evil intentions. The heart can be deceitful and desperately wicked.

We can repent. The Bible in Acts 3:19 states 'Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.' No matter what he had done, there was reconciliation and final resolution between John Newton and his God. The same is true for us no matter how ugly or bad we think our sins are. Amazing Grace. 

Philip Yancey wrote a book 'What is so Amazing about Grace.' The grace of God, Yancey wrote, separates the sinner from the sin, grace does not excuse sin but it treasures the sinner. 

For Charles Wesley the hymn writer, grace became the background music of his life. He wrote

"Long my imprisoned spirit lay

fast bound in sin and nature's night

Thine eye diffused a quickening ray.

I woke. My dungeon flamed with light.

My chains fell off, my heart was free

I rose went forth and followed Thee."  

 

Newton's tombstone reads, "John Newton, Clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy."  Truly amazing

Lionel

Ref 1: James Walvin, The Trader, the Owner, the Slave. Random House 2007

First published 12 August 2007.  

Out Of The Miry Clay

 

Out of the Miry Clay

"He brought me up up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay and set my feet upon a rock and established my goings." Psalms 40:2

Emil Brunner wrote that we are stuck so fast in the mire that we cannot help ourselves. We are all sinners in a wrong relationship with God and hence with our neighbours also. We are seeking ourselves. We wish to appear clever and to attain the highest by means of our own intrinsic powers. In our inmost being we have each gone astray. We are godless, loveless, self seeking, God-escaping. (Ref 1)

He is right. The Bible states in Romans 3, 'For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.' In the Old Testament, Isaiah said, "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way." (Isaiah 53:6a).

We are sinking in quicksand, the more we think we are in control of our lives, the more messy it becomes and in the clay pits we sink deeper. Fortunately, I learned the lesson of letting go and letting God early in medical school. When going through a period of examination failure, a classmate shared with me this verse from Psalms 40:2. She shared that when going through difficult times, God is there to set me right, to lift me out of the miry clay. 

Subsequently I learned a follow-on lesson from Psalm 37:23-24, 'The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with His hand.' In the struggle of life, it is not I who need to grab and cling to the hand of God, instead, God's hand lifts me up.

This truth of not being afraid to lose your life rang true in the testimony of martyred missionary Jim Elliot. Elliot and four other missionaries, Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming and Nate Saint attempted to bring the gospel to the Huaorani Indians in South America but were slaughtered by 10 Indian warriors on 8 January 1956. His biography was written by wife, Elisabeth Elliot and published under the title 'Shadow of the Almighty.' (Ref 2). In a journal entry on 28 October, 1949, Jim Elliot penned these words, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

In similar fashion, Jesus said "Whoever finds his life shall lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matt 10:39), Jesus meant that we must learn to lose control of our lives and hand it over to Him. We must not make ourselves and our survival the only point of our lives. If like the poet Henley we think, 'I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my destiny' we will find that instead of being in control, we will be at the mercy of forces beyond our control. We will sink deeper into the quagmire. Be like Saint Francis of Assisi who concluded, "It is in dying that we are born to eternal life." It is the same proposition as 'Let Go and Let God.'

More than just lifting us out of the miry clay, the Bible informs that something good will come out of our lives.  My Christian friends, Kenneth and Huiwen are a husband and wife, team who founded Studio Asobi. Their works of art are inspirational. Huiwen wrote, "Making something out of clay, which is essentially worthless dust, and transforming it into something of value gives us a sense of responsibility." if we learn to surrender like useless lumps of clay to the potter, then something of value and worth will be the product.

Let God the potter do His work and shape our lives. He will fashion something of worth and beauty as we pray 'Change My Heart Oh God.' Isaiah said, "Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand." Isaiah 64:8.

Lionel     

Ref 1: Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter. Plough Publishing House 2003.

Ref 2: Elizabeth Elliot. Shadow of the Almighty, The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot, Harper Collins