As the car pulled to my side of the road, I recognized the familiar face behind the wheel.

“Well, hello again,” the old gentleman smiled as I jumped into his car.

He was probably in his 80s, diminutive and dapper, with a snappy white fedora perched at a rightward angle across his forehead. It’s been almost 50 years and I no longer remember his name but I will always remember him. When I was a troubled teenager living with my grandparents in southern Minnesota I used to “try to get my head together” by hitchhiking out into the rolling countryside to be alone. On a handful of occasions, I wound up a passenger in this little man’s car. He was a lonely old widower with a love for friendly conversation and, according to him, he rode the roads on a regular basis, stopping at diners for coffee and picking up stragglers of every sort along the way.

“My family tells me I’m endangering myself,” he told me once, “but I figure you can’t meet new friends without first meeting strangers.”

I’ve thought about him often since I last rode the roads with him. He took risks because he cared more about people than he did his own safety. I don’t know if he was a Christian but I know that his attitude was consistent with the attitudes of righteous men in the Bible. In today’s passage, for instance, we see Abraham welcoming three strangers with open arms. As readers of the Bible, we know that the strangers are two angels and, amazingly, God himself! Yet, it does not appear that Abraham immediately knew any of this; he just apparently had a penchant for hospitality.

Perhaps this is why Hebrews 13:2 exhorts us to “entertain strangers,” reminding us that in so doing some have welcomed angels “unaware.” This is always hard for me but when the opportunity comes I try to remember my old friend’s words from long ago: “You can’t meet new friends without first meeting strangers.”

Vince Hartford, Clifton Forge, Va. 

Extended Scripture: Genesis 17–18