We recently came back from a short visit to Vancouver Island to visit family. While there, we stayed in the home of some missionary friends who were away ministering up the West Coast of BC and Alaska. Although it wasn’t a restful visit – visiting family can be that way – the mission organization who hosted us showed great hospitality in providing food in the home and a meal at their base while we were there. It was humbling but also was an encouragement to experience and witness how hospitality should be expressed.

The Bible tells us in Romans 12:10 (ESV) to “outdo one another in showing honor”. As a naturally competitive person, this is an exhortation I can get behind! But what does that really mean? Am I being commanded to fight against others to be more honorable than them? Is there a ranking system? Maybe I can run some brackets and get into the Final Four of Fellowship? On the other hand, Galatians 5:13-15 says this:

“For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”

So then I’m not competing to be the best. In fact, when I do let my love of competition overwhelm the love of Christ, then I am reduced to biting and devouring my neighbors instead of loving and honoring them. Instead, I am to seek to love “earnestly” as 1 Peter 4:8 declares and to do as Jesus commands us in Mark 12:31, to love my neighbor as myself. In Luke 10 Jesus tells me that my neighbor is pretty much everyone, including not just my friends, family, and loved ones, but also the people I don’t like, am irritated with, or who get in my way.

The neighborhood around the church is full of two-way streets that, when flanked by parked cars, are barely wide enough for one car to get through. In the winter, you add the snow and ice ruts and it makes for an interesting drive. Traveling through these streets then becomes a constant game of chicken: who is going to get out of the way first? It is so easy for me to feel entitled to the right of way when I find myself facing the nose of another vehicle. Obviously, I deserve to go through and you need to back up and pull over to let me through, is my knee-jerk response. And I have plenty of reasons to prove why I’m right. I was here first. I am further on the road than you. I pulled over the last time. Some of them are even true as I am defending my position to no one – the other driver knows nothing of the explosive sense of pride and entitlement filling my car.

But Paul tells us to outdo in showing honor. We should run and seek to win at showing kindness. We should run to be generous and in so doing, show the love of Christ. How can we integrate loving service and showing honor into everyday life?

• Give up the right of way on a narrow road is a demonstration of hospitality.
• Maybe at work, filling the copier at work with paper when it’s low, or start the next pot of coffee – especially if it’s not your job.
• Bring a cup of coffee to the person you’re sitting with.
• If you’re a church member or regular attendee, park a little farther away so that a new visitor or a family with small kids can park closer.
• Bring a snack to your small group.
• Make an effort to talk to your neighbors when you pass them on the sidewalk or as you shovel snow.

I love that we serve a God who doesn’t give us a list of impossible tasks to complete, but rather, He has demonstrated for us through Jesus, what we are called to. More still, He then empowers us through the Holy Spirit, to fulfill the works He has called us to, and He lovingly encourages us to keep going as He encouraged the church in Philadelphia to keep going:

“‘I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who says that they are Jews and are not, but lie – behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you. Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth… The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.’” (Revelations 3)

Jesus himself says in Matthew 25:40 that what you do for the least of these, you do for Him. In loving and serving our neighbor, we are also loving and serving our Saviour.