April 10: Romans 12:9-13

Key Verse: Romans 12:13
Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Devotion:
When someone lays down a list of thing you should be doing, we find it hard to agree to them without question… just because it is a list in writing! At least that is how I run! But I’m sure I’m not alone in my weird thinking like this – we just have to look deeper into what is right, righteous and proper to do. We can go overboard and uphold everything righteous and say we should never mix with others because they are not righteous etc., but that is totally wrong! We do not have the right to judge anyone and hence should only look into what we are doing wrong when compared to Christ’s will in our lives.

I say Christ’s will and not His law because each of us has a different path to follow – God has designed us different from our neighbours and different from our family members. Each of us is unique in the way we are and so we need different ways to follow to get the best out of us. But these are the common goals we should all be looking forward to doing in our lives.

If we start to think about others more than ourselves, we will soon lose site of the failing we think we have and try to uphold and build up those around us; we lose focus on our shortcomings and focus on the light Christ is bringing into the world around us. In times of lock-down and physical restrictions we need to think of new ways in which we can accomplish these goals. Somehow they seemed a whole lot easier when we were able to move around!

The last verse in our passage ends in “Practice hospitality.” Well, we can do this in new ways, we can reach out to others and we can invite them in – it does not have to be physical locations! Think about the disciple Paul. He went out all over the place to reach out to people – but he could not be in different places at the same time. So he wrote letters to people and to churches so they could feel more involved with what he was doing. We now have the Internet (with all its failings) which can be used for good and can be used to reach out to people. I have been writing these devotions for about 15 years and using the Internet to share them. Spread the love!

Points to Ponder:
How do you use the Internet?

Will you reach out to someone in a different way today?