This week we’re praying for our partner, Aviv Ministry, located in south Tel Aviv. It runs a drop-in centre that is a welcoming space for some of the most vulnerable people in Tel Aviv – homeless people, sex workers and people with substance abuse disorders.

Committed to living out their faith in Christ – to ‘act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with [their] God’ (Micah 6:8) – the volunteers at the Aviv Centre don’t just wait for people to come to them. They actively go out into the streets to make initial contact with people, including visits to nearby brothels. At the Centre, they provide hot meals, medical aid and clothing for people with substance-abuse disorders.

The Aviv Centre also encourages people to start rehabilitation programmes at their rehabilitation centres. Since it first opened its doors in 2012 at least 25 people have successfully gone through rehabilitation, entered work and built healthy relationships and families. The Centre is also a place where believers from different Israeli congregations can volunteer and put their faith into practice.

Bible reading

‘While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’

Matthew 9:10-13

Thought

The Aviv Centre is passionate about reaching people seen as outcasts from society with the love of Christ. This is a beautiful imitation of how Jesus treated people. Time and again in the gospels, we see people with a ‘low’ status in society flocking to Jesus and being welcomed and embraced by him: from children and lepers to prostitutes and tax collectors.

‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice’ is a quotation from Hosea 6:6. The word ‘sacrifice’ is shorthand for observance of religious rituals. Far more important to God is ‘mercy’, which would have led the Pharisees to love and care for these ‘sinners’ as Jesus did. God cares deeply about our heart-attitude towards other people.

Ask yourself: The word translated ‘mercy’ in Hosea 6:6 is hesed, which is Hebrew for ‘steadfast love’. How might showing ‘steadfast love’ to people around us help transform our own communities?

Prayer

Loving God,

We thank you for the ministry of the Aviv Centre and we pray for the people it serves. We are deeply saddened by the trauma and difficult circumstances that so many have experienced and we pray that they would find refuge and hope at Aviv. We pray especially for those who have committed to going to rehab and we pray that you would sustain them as they change direction.

Help us to be imitators of Christ in the way that we treat other people. Help us to truly understand what it means that you desire mercy and not sacrifice.

May you fill us with your steadfast love and enable us to pour it out on other people. May we be a blessing to others in our own contexts.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

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