I love the way God’s Word is so practical and tangible. God writes words to us that get right down into the nitty gritty of how we live.
1 Peter 4:8 says: “And above all things have fervent love among yourselves.” The word fervent in this passage is “ektenes” and means “to stretch out, to extend the hand, intense.”
Love is more than a feeling. Love is action. If we have fervent love, we’ll be stretching out our hands. Of course, we do this all day long as mothers, don’t we? We are always reaching out for babies. We nurse them, hold them to us, or wear them in a baby carrier more than we leave them lying on their own. We continually reach out our arms to touch, caress, and hug our children. We cook for them and sere them food. We clean the house. Yes, even this is love in action. Who wants to live in a grimy and unorganized home? That’s not love.
We extend hands in hospitality. Immediately after reading “fervent love,” we read the admonition to “Use hospitality one to another without grudging.” Hospitality doesn’t just happen. You have to cook. You have to prepare a table. Yes, you have to extend your hand. But this is fervent love. It is biblical Christianity. It is the lifestyle of the kind of God. It is part of our “one anothering faith (Romans 1:12).
After reading my last post about contentment, an older mother asked how she could be content in her home with all her children grown. Dear older mothers, you have even more time to reach out in love to people through hospitality. It is the most beautiful way to show you care for people when you invite them to your home and to your table. Thee are so many lonely and needy people around all waiting to feel God’s love and comfort. The loveliest way you can do this is through hospitality. You’ll never be bored for a moment. Not only will you bless others, you’ll be blessed beyond measure yourself (Isaiah 58:5-12).
Our God is an hospitable God. He loves to reach forth His hands to bless people, but He must do it through His people.
The virtuous woman “STRETCHES out her hand to the poor; yea she REACHES forth her hands to the needy” (v. 20).
When God reveals the picture of the lifestyle of the godly woman, we read that she reaches out her hands to embrace children, practice hospitality, wash the saints’ feet, relieve the afflicted and help those in distress, and continually stretches out her hands to all kinds of good works (1 Timothy 5;10). Nothing happens without reaching out our hands
We’ll talk about more ways tomorrow.
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
Painting by Mary Cassatt 1896. “Maternal Caress”