By Brian Crawford
We live in a culture married to convenience. Through modern technology, we are increasingly offered more with less effort, and perpetually promised faster via the easier. Libraries stored in our pockets, meals prepared instantly, and answers acquired in the snap of a finger.
We crave convenience, and that’s why human connection can often seem so difficult. Human connection is anything but convenient. Despite our best technological efforts in modernity, relationships only grow in the soil of inconvenience and the light of time.
Hebrews 13 gives clear evidence of this truth.
The book of Hebrews is written in a context where the church is facing intense hardship for the decision to follow Jesus. Real persecution. Real loss of property. Real separation from families. To make matters worse, other expressions of faith are being permitted because they are seen by the empire as non-threatening, creating a temptation to depart from Jesus and back to old forms of religion that promised physical safety, comfort, and convenience.
It’s in this context that the author calls the church back to Christ-centered connection in verses 1-2: “Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
Brother Love. Stranger Hospitality. Both are threatened when convenience dwindles and risk rises.
The author is calling them away from the old camps of convenience and challenging them to remember that those who have forsaken everything to follow Jesus are still family. Love them.
We need this encouragement now more than ever. As the temperature of our current cultural moment continues to rise, we’re tempted to close ranks around our worldly affinities: culture, class, color, and politics. But the Spirit’s word to the church remains the same: Let brotherly love continue.
Why? Because in Christ, you’ve been deeply loved and made family. Upon His resurrection, Jesus refers for the first time to the disciples as His brothers (John 20:17), signaling not only a change in our inheritance (from death to life) but a change in our relationship (from outsiders to family).
For this reason, we must run toward one another in inconvenience, never away.
The author gives us one more way to run toward inconvenience: hospitality. We are told not to neglect welcoming others, even strangers. In the Hebrew context, this was financially costly, socially risky, and legally exposing. Welcoming the wrong person could implicate you. Yet our welcoming is worth every cost because Jesus welcomed us (Exodus 22:21, Romans 15:7, Ephesians 2:12-13).
Don’t let hospitality wane just because it’s inconvenient. Don’t trade welcoming for comfort.
For some, that means inviting a lonely neighbor to dinner. For others, it means pushing the unfolded clothes off the couch to make room for a sister whom the Spirit has been nudging you to disciple. Each opportunity reflects the welcome we’ve received in Christ.
The world will keep promising faster, easier, and more convenient, but Jesus keeps calling us to something deeper, more lasting, more authentic. Follow Him into the inconvenience, where our faith is most genuinely seen and savored. Real love. Real hospitality. Real connection.
Brian Crawford serves as lead pastor of City Light Church in Vicksburg and president of Mission Mississippi, a statewide reconciliation ministry working across all 82 counties of the great state of Mississippi. He and his wife, Candi, are passionate about building bridges across dividing lines through the power of the gospel.