2 minute read
REFLECTION: MIRIAM, CALM IN A CRISIS
One way of understanding this tension and navigating the ethical dilemmas we face is to see the good life as one of hospitality. Hospitality is the act of sharing the good things we have with others so that they too might enjoy them. Rather than removing joy, joy is shared and increased.
The gospel itself is the good news of an act of hospitality. God desires to share all good things with us. We are welcome at God’s table. Yet, this hospitality came at a cost to God.
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So, how might this look in practice? Close to home, an easy way to picture this is with food. Making a delicious meal is one way to enjoy the good things God has made. Meals are social, so we can invite to our table those in our community who are in need, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual.
In my own life, an act of sharing a few meals has resulted in sharing meals for life, as we expanded our family to include our friend’s daughter when our friend died. True hospitality takes you down paths you didn’t imagine, which cost much but give even more.
And when I buy from a social enterprise which helps people, I can enjoy what I have purchased knowing the purchase has also given to others. But when I buy that which has come at the expense of another’s wellbeing, I should recognise that instead of giving, I have taken from another. Every purchase provides an opportunity to choose a comfortable life for myself and discomfort for another, or the truly good life of the gospel in which joy multiplies.
MEGAN POWELL DU TOIT
The good life isn’t individual but communal. As the proverb goes: ‘Better is a dinner of vegetables where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it’, (Prov 15:17). God’s love in Trinity overflowed to us in creation. As we enjoy that creation together, our model is not to exploit but to share, giving much but gaining even more.
Reverend Megan Powell du Toit is a Baptist minister and wordsmith (editor, writer, podcaster and poet) based in Sydney.
MIRIAM, CALM IN A CRISIS
BY MEREDITH WRIGHT
‘When she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.’ —Exodus 2:3-4 (For context, read Exodus 2:1-10) When my first daughter was born, this story came to mind. In the middle of a genocide, a mother hid her newborn baby for three months. I cannot fathom how. When she could no longer hide him, was it because he grew too loud, too restless? In her last effort to protect the baby Moses, she set him afloat in the Nile. The terror, grief, and uncertainty would have been overwhelming—too overwhelming to stay and watch. But Miriam, the baby’s sister, stood nearby.
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