The world is a strange place; everyday through different channel we come across people we barely know. True friends, close associates and even couples were once strangers to each other. There is a saying by an anonymous person: “It takes a day to know someone.”Every stranger is a strange person until you interact closely. Building a positive mind-set in relationship, especially with people we don’t know is the aim of this discuss and study.
Who Is A Stranger?
Anybody could be a stranger. Everyone is a stranger to somebody somewhere unknown. In life, we will keep meeting with strangers.
Oxford defines stranger to mean:
• A person who one does not know or with whom one is not familiar.
• A person who does not know or is not known in a particular place or community.
• A person who is entirely unaccustomed to a feeling, experience or situation.
• A stranger in the technical sense of the term may be defined to be a person of foreign extraction.
During the Bible times, anyone from a foreign land residing in Palestine was considered a ‘stranger.’ Jews had regulated ‘special laws’ to strangers:
•They were not allowed to enter the congregation of the Lord even to their 10th generation. “An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD forever,”(Deut. 23:3).
Other Rules In Dealing With Strangers Was
Also Given In Deut. 24:14-21.
14: “You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether one of your brethren or one of the aliens who is in your land within your gates. 15: Each day you shall give him his wages, and not let the sun go down on it, for he is poor and has set his heart on it; lest he cry out against you to the Lord, and it be sin to you. 16: Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall the children be put to death for their fathers; a person shall be put to death for his own sin. 17: “You shall not pervert justice due the stranger or the fatherless, nor take a widow’s garment as a pledge. 18: But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this thing. 19: “When you reap your harvest in your field, and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. 20: When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. 21: When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it afterward; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.”
These Includes:
• They were not to be oppressed.
• They were to be paid for theirlabourand on time.
• Their relatives were not to suffer for their offences.
• Their judgments were not to be perverted.
• Leftover was to be intentionally created for them during harvest – share your abundance with them.
• Always have a reserved item for strangers – they were to be budgeted for and;
• Widows in Israel were not allowed to marry strangers – Deut. 25:5.
• Strangers should be part of your celebrations and feasting – Deut. 26:10-11.
• Strangers were to be part of the thirdyear tithe – Deut. 26:12.
• Jews could buy them as slaves – Lev. 25:44.
• Venerable Stephen Wolemonwu is the Rector, Ibru Ecumenical Centre, Agbarha-Otor, Delta State (08035413812)
