A great perspective on “Hospitality”
I was scanning Facebook this morning, as I often do (throw rocks later, just pay attention), and I happened across this excellent note from Leah Hargrove, a member of our church. I wanted to share it here. I hope you enjoy it as well.
A personal confession: her words cut me deep, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t true. I will let her speak for herself…
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Trying to be honest about pro-life views has made me wonder about my other beliefs on the value of people: if the littlest people are just as valuable as big people, do I really believe (and live) like everyone is priceless? Like impoverished people are as valuable as financially stable people? That drop outs are as valuable as college grads? That Alzheimer patients are as valuable as the busy doctors who treat them?
What about felons, the homeless, and those suffering from serious mental illness? I never have them over for dinner, or even a glass of water, so maybe I’m not as pro-life as Jesus calls us to be. At least not every life.
The Blaze had a great article about the inconvenience and burden of loving other people. Those who make sweeping claims that we should just “love and accept other people” have probably never tried to do it to anyone but their friends and family. “To care about people is hard.”
Jesus said that real love is laying down your life for someone. Sometimes I think that committing to care about and mentor someone is harder than actually dying for them. Easy enough when it’s your brother, maybe, much harder when it’s a drug addict, a liar, a hypocrite.
If you believe truly that all humans are endowed with equal value and right to life from conception, how does that extend to the adults and children around you? Defending the unborn is easy, because they’ve never messed up. Living and sacrificing for the mom who birthed a meth-exposed, wailing, agonized preemie is hard. Condemning her is easy. Forgiving her is hard. Believing she could change is hard. Listening to her excuses is hard. I find myself wishing she would just disappear and be somebody else’s problem, sort of a mental abortion.
If you are pro-life, pick someone, or a group of someones, to lay down a little more of your life for this month. Cut your budget to help them out. Give up a family night or Saturday morning to sit and listen to their problems. Use your car, gas, and time to give them rides. Don’t get frustrated. Don’t think that you deserve recognition (I am talking to myself). Pray for them every night, until you truly care for them and the burden of loving them is light.
If you are pro-choice, ask yourself, and God too, where your basis for a life worth defending stops. Examine if you are truly loving forgotten people, and if they are the people Jesus calls us to notice. Does each life have the same value? Why? When does that value start, stop, or change?
I don’t foresee any sweeping changes to human behaviors in the world, but if even I can try to be truly pro-life, through God’s grace, and love someone that I would rather discard, ignore, abort, then that is worth something indeed. God is good to change my hard heart.
“What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”
Matthew 18:12-14