The Celebrity Treatment (Friday Devotional)

“Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

- Hebrews 13:1-2

“Then righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’”

- Matthew 25:37-40

Among the many incredible athletes who shined on the world stage at this year’s Olympic Games, my favorite was U.S. swimmer Katie Ledecky. As you likely know, Ledecky was one of this year’s standout American athletes, winning 5 medals total, 4 gold. Her performance in Rio, especially her dominant showing in the 800m freestyle, made her a household name—her face is on magazine covers, she’s made the talk show circuit, and just the other night she threw out the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game while superstar Bryce Harper was relegated to holding her medals for her. Katie Ledecky, in other words, is a big deal.

But coming into the Olympics, most of us didn’t know that yet. Though Ledecky won a gold medal in the 2012 Olympics in London, few Americans probably could have picked her out of a crowd the week before the festivities began in Rio. I say that with a reasonable degree of certainty because of a story that one of the U.S. swimmers tweeted out one week before the Opening Ceremony. Ledecky and her teammates were outside Maracanã Stadium, headed to a practice, when a couple of girls tapped Ledecky on the shoulder and asked if she wouldn’t mind taking a photo. You might assume the girls wanted a picture with Ledecky, photographic proof that they’d met a gold medalist…and if they’d met her 2 weeks and 5 medals later, that probably would have been true. But that wasn’t the case—the girls were asking her to take a picture for the two of them. Gold medalist and superstar-to-be Katie Ledecky, unrecognized by the two tourists, was reduced to playing amateur photographer like she was any other bystander.

It’s funny to imagine how those girls might have acted if they’d tapped Katie Ledecky on the shoulder two weeks later than they did. Maybe they’d have asked for an autograph or a selfie, or perhaps they’d have been too starstruck to say a word. What’s virtually certain is that they wouldn’t have asked her to play photographer for them. There’s a reason for that: we act different around ‘important’ people than we do around ‘normal’ people. To put it in terms of Katie Ledecky’s story, there are some people whom we want to take pictures with us, and other people whom we want to take pictures for us.

Scripture cautions against that worldly attitude, one that elevates certain people based on their status while relegating others to a lower position. In fact, the verses above instruct you to bestow an incredible status onto those you might otherwise ignore—when faced with the impoverished woman or the imprisoned man, you are supposed to see Jesus staring back at you. When the opportunity to serve someone presents itself, you are called to show the sort of grace and hospitality you might if an angel of the Lord were in your presence. Love that that you might normally reserve for the divine is, it seems, meant to be extended to even the lowliest who cross your path.

But intentionally or not, most of us are pretty meritocratic when it comes to how we show kindness, doling out compassion to those we think deserve it or who might return the favor on down the road. We are slower to engage with “the least of these,” the people we don’t even want to think about. We’d rather not make eye contact with them, much less love them.

But grace doesn’t allow the Christian to ignore anyone—instead it demands that the unloved and the unlovable be seen, respected, and most of all, loved. Grace calls the believer to see the image of God in every person, no matter their situation or their story, and to respond accordingly, with the mercy of Christ. In the kingdom of God there is no caste system, no pecking order, there are only those saved by the grace of Jesus Christ. So as you encounter people in your daily life, whether they are Olympian or ordinary, don’t demand a reason to love them—the cross is reason enough.

New Light (Friday Devotional)

“Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.”

- Isaiah 58:8-10

Imagine yourself standing alone in a dark room, the only illumination a lit candle in your hand. As minutes tick by, you can feel the heat of the flickering flame inch closer to your hand as the wax melts and the candle shrinks. There is no sunlight, no electric bulb, no flashlight—the moment your candle burns out, you will be plunged into total darkness.

But then a figure emerges from the other side of the room, someone you hadn’t seen through the dim light your candle provides. She holds in her hand a candle of her own, brand new, never before lit. She looks from her candle to yours, silently asking the question—will you light her candle with yours, will you draw from your meager flame to create one for her? Your choice is simple: you can let your flame fizzle out and lose any chance at light, or you can share what you have and create more light in the room than ever.

This is one of the great conflicts of the Christian life—when confronted with darkness, do you greedily cling to the light of Christ as something for you alone, or do you still seek to share it? Life presents plenty of moments in which darkness threatens to overcome you, whether for a brief moment or a lengthy season. When that happens, the tendency is to withdraw within yourself, to focus only on your problems, your situation. You become quick to cast blame and slow to forgive, pushing others away as you sink further into darkness. The feeling is that what you have to offer others you must save for yourself right now, that it is the only light you have left and you have to cherish it for as long as it will last.

But Scripture offers a different remedy—when you are falling into despair, instead of retreating inside the darkness, offer what light you have to others. When you want to be served, serve. When you want to be forgiven, forgive. When you want to be loved, love. And like the candle in the room, far from extinguishing your light, your sacrifice brings about double the illumination that existed before. By placing others before yourself in obedience to Christ, even and especially when you are struggling, “your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.”

The wisdom of the world says that when you are struggling, you should retreat and regroup, focusing entirely on yourself until you get back on your feet again. But the cross pushes you to look beyond your own struggle and to give of yourself—even when you have next to nothing to give. The world’s way may let your flame keep flickering on for a few moments, but only Christ’s way can bring new light in the darkness.

Hide and Seek (Friday Devotional)

“Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord.”

- Jeremiah 23:23-24

I struggled to keep my breathing quiet and my body still. I tightly squeezed my eyes shut, fearing the whites could give me away. Above all, I listened carefully, paying close attention to every footfall, every whisper. They were close, I was certain of it. My time was almost up.

But then, miraculously, the voices started to fade, until all I could hear was the hum of the air conditioner. They hadn’t found me, I was safe! I allowed myself a sigh of relief even as I stayed alert, knowing my pursuers could be back at any moment. This was serious business—this was hide-and-go-seek. I couldn’t let myself relax for a single second.

But, as those seconds became minutes, my initial adrenaline started to morph into something else—boredom? Annoyance? Fear? Where were they? I had done my part, I had hidden—now it was my cousins’ job to find me! As proud as I had been of myself a few minutes ago, when I had remained undiscovered even with them so close, now I was getting nervous. Had they forgotten about me?

After a few more minutes, I looked at my watch and saw that thirty minutes had passed since our game of hide-and-go-seek had begun, and my cousins didn’t seem any closer to finding me than at the beginning of the game. So, unfurling my stiff body from the corner of the closet where I’d spent the last half hour, I made my way to the kitchen only to find everyone sitting at the table enjoying a snack.

Indignantly, I demanded an explanation from my cousins. “Where were you? I’ve been waiting forever!”

My oldest cousin smiled and answered. “Oh, we found you at the very beginning…that closet’s the first place we looked. We just thought we’d see how it long it would take for you to come looking for us.”

When we try to hide from God, we make the same mistakes I did as a child playing hide-and-go-seek: we underestimate how much we want to be found…and how bad we are at hiding. As fallen beings, it is in our nature to want to flee from the will of God when it seems too difficult or demanding. But when you step away from the presence of the Lord, just as natural is the subsequent feeling of regret, the realization that you want to be found far more than you want to be lost.

What we lose sight of, from the moment we run from His will to the moment we return in repentance, is that there is no hiding from God—that even when we leave Him, He never leaves us. Even when we want to be hidden, He has not lost sight of us.

There are times, especially after you have stumbled, when it seems like your attempts to hide from God have actually succeeded. In those moments, it can feel like you have found a place so secret, so dark, that God is not there. Nothing could be more terrifying. When those times come, take comfort in knowing that, like the Prodigal Son, you can always return home. No matter how far you fall or how well you hide, God never loses track of you—sometimes He’s just waiting for you to leave your hiding place and come looking for Him.

A False Sense of Security (Friday Devotional)

“The Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all humankind. From where he sits enthroned he watches all the inhabitants of the earth—he who fashions the hearts of them all, and observes all their deeds. A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save. Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.”

- Psalm 33:13-19

A few nights ago, I went to the grocery store at a time I’d normally be getting ready for bed (Lindsey needed Tylenol to soothe a throbbing headache and we didn’t have any in our medicine cabinet). As I pulled in to the HEB parking lot, I noticed a man in a florescent vest that said “SECURITY” leisurely walking up and down the aisles. I’d seen him before on other trips to the store, but for some reason this time I paid extra attention to his stroll through the parking lot, watching while he scanned the area. As I parked and walked in, I felt reassured somehow—for the 5 minutes I’d be in the store, my car was safe.

When I emerged from the store carrying my receipt and the bottle of Tylenol, he happened to be standing right by the door. I wished him a good night and kept walking toward the car, but in that brief moment, I noticed something—for a security guard, he didn’t look much different from me or anybody else in that half-empty parking lot. He wasn’t armed, he didn’t have a walkie talkie, and he didn’t carry a badge. He didn’t have a partner or a car with flashing lights and a siren. He wasn’t even particularly big, maybe 6 feet tall and less than 200 lbs. Maybe he was a martial artist or an off-duty cop, I don’t know, but the only thing that appeared to set him apart from anybody else in the parking lot was that florescent vest that labeled him SECURITY. And yet for some reason, I still felt just a little bit safer with him around.

From childhood through adulthood, one of our most fundamental human needs is that we feel safe—but for something so vital, it’s amazing how quickly we settle for things and people that offer only the promise and appearance of safety. Desperate to feel secure, we place our faith in anyone or anything that seems bigger and stronger than us, comforted by the knowledge that at least now we’re not on our own. And then when the walls come tumbling down and our sense of security is shaken once again, we despair at having placed our trust in the wrong hands—only to then immediately go looking for a new savior, even bigger and stronger than the last.

Psalm 33 reminds us of the futility of looking for absolute security in earthly means: “A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save.” The conventional places we look for safety in a dangerous world, the psalmist says, ultimately are not where deliverance is found. Salvation—from fear, from sorrow, from sin, and ultimately from death—comes from the Lord.

In dangerous days when fear is perpetually at the forefront of our thoughts, don’t settle for material solutions to a spiritual problem, seeking your security through earthly means. God promises He will never leave your nor forsake you, that He will be your refuge, and that He will be with you even to the end of the age. This world may offer promises of security, but only God can offer you the guarantee of salvation. Why settle for less?