Service and Hospitality: Ephrem the Syrian: Service as Hymn

Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373) saw all of life -- including acts of service -- as forms of worship. He wrote: "The sick are your song; the poor are your hymn." For Ephrem, serving the needy was not a separate category from worship but its most concrete expression. The community that ignores the poor while singing beautiful hymns has fundamentally misunderstood worship.…