Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
There is nothing nicer than staying in a nice hotel where they turn down your sheets at night, make your bed in the morning, give you wake up calls, offer fancy towels folded like swans, and throw in complementary meals. The hospitality industry has made a business out of caring well for people they don’t even know and making them to feel special.
Hotels vary in prices, and you can even rent someone’s home for a decent rate at times, especially if rented with friends. In the ancient world, overnight stays at inns were expensive and kind of… well… they had a bad reputation.* What were people to do when staying in town for business or while passing through?
The broader Greco-Roman culture as well as the culture of pious Jews and Christians involved giving people a place to stay for an evening.* Can you imagine? I can’t! I can’t imagine coming into town, looking around, and hoping that someone offers to allow me and my family to stay the night with them. That’s wild!
I’ve stayed in people’s homes that I don’t know, but it was definitely someone’s home that knew someone that I knew. Putting up strangers… that’s something all together different!
This kind of hospitality is a hospitality recognized in heaven.*
Hospitality is an amazing gift. My wife has this gift, and she exercises it generously! Everyone who knows her has felt the warmth of her hospitality in a way that teases of heaven. When friends or family come over, they are shown a love through carefully thought-out planning, action, and service that out-performs the best hotel (sure, I’m her husband, so i’m biased… but seriously… she’s gifted)!
God invites all of us is to show the same kind of thought-out planning, action, and service to people we don’t know. Abraham (Genesis 16), Gideon (Judges 6), and Manoah (Judges 13) all provided strangers with hospitality, and in their cases, they entertained angels!
We live in a different time and culture than the author of Hebrews which might make providing this same expression of hospitality feel dangerous. But it’s worth asking: how many times have you shown love to a stranger? When have you shown hospitality to someone that you do not know?
Jesus said, “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).
When we show hospitality to a stranger, we may or may not be entertaining an angel, but we are for sure serving Jesus.
Today, take a step.
Maybe today the one step God wants you to take is to do something to intentionally care for someone you don’t even know. Perhaps today God wants you to let a friend-of-a-friend stay on your couch or in an extra room for a night. Maybe today there is a stranger in need of a friend.
Whatever the step, ask God to direct it. Take a moment to take that step. Invite Him to speak. He will.
Life is a long road. Walk it with Jesus.
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*Stedman, R. C. (1992). Hebrews (Heb 13:1-6). IVP Academic.
Grindheim, S. (2023). The Letter to the Hebrews (D. A. Carson, Ed.; pp. 664–665). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
France, R. T. (2006). Hebrews. In T. Longman III & D. E. Garland (Eds.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Hebrews–Revelation (Revised Edition) (Vol. 13, pp. 183–184). Zondervan.
Guthrie, G. (1998). Hebrews (p. 435–436). Zondervan Publishing House.