July 31, 2018
Last night I was listening to a podcast (that’s my new thing, apparently) of Jeremy Courtney. He is a man who lives with his family in the Middle East with his organization, Preemptive Love. The podcast was called “The World is a Scary Place, Love Anyway.”
Last night I was listening to a podcast (that’s my new thing, apparently) of Jeremy Courtney. He is a man who lives with his family in the Middle East with his organization, Preemptive Love. The podcast was called “The World is a Scary Place, Love Anyway.”
In it, he brought up truly fleshing out our fears to find
out what is at the root. For example,
letting in refugees. The true fear under
all the layers may be fear of death or fear of loss of control (and therefore
if our hope is in Christ, why would we fear death? and if our trust is in God, why do we fear
not being in control?)
What he said next though really struck me – that we need to
also then ask the question on the other side, “What if we don’t let in the refuges?”
A verse this morning reminded me of all this:
“Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought,
thinking, ‘The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,’ and therefore
view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing; your neighbor might
cry out to the LORD against you, and you would incur guilt. Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so…” Deuteronomy 15:9-10a
“It’s a dreadful thing to have the cry of the poor against
us, for God has his ear open to that cry, and, in compassion to them, will be
sure to reckon with those that deal hardly with them.” Matthew Henry
