Your children are away for the weekend and you have decided not to cook a 'proper' meal but take a day off and have beans on toast for Sunday lunch. Your husband, a hospitable chap, sees a new family in the service and invites them home for lunch with no prior reference to the cook! Does this sound familiar?
In Genesis 18, Abraham received some surprise visitors, and without so much as a 'please', he told Sarah to hurry up and get a meal. We are not told how she felt about his request, but it is clear that she did as she was asked. The question of how to react when faced with our modern-day equivalent scene made an interesting Bible study for me recently. How would you react? Leave it to some other church member to do the inviting? Panic and get your husband to tell the visitors his wife is suddenly unwell? Go home and cut the pork chops in half, seething with resentment?
A few weeks ago, I had to remind myself of our Bible study about Sarah. One Sunday I took some German visitors to the airport before the morning service; the breakfast things had not been washed up and absolutely no lunch preparations had been made. We noticed friends from another town (who are probably reading this article!) in the service, and sure enough my husband kindly invited them and their children back for lunch. My first reaction was: 'Will we be a stumbling block to them if we buy Kentucky Fried Chicken on a Sunday?' My second was: 'How many fish fingers are in the freezer?' My third (I'm slow, I know) was to remember the conclusion of our Bible study: as a wife in this situation I can choose how to respond. I can either resent my husband's kindness and the fact that he didn't refer to me, or I can be glad that he has such confidence in me.
