Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Today's reading titled Outside the Camp was written by Tim Gustafson.

Friday was Market Day in the rural town in Ghana where I grew up.

After all these years, I still recall

one particular vendor. Her fingers and toes eroded by Hansen's disease, leprosy. She

would crouch on her mat and scoop her produce with a hollowed-out gourd. Some avoided her. My mother

made it a point to buy from her regularly. I saw her only on market days,

then she would disappear outside the town. In the time of the ancient Israelites, diseases like

leprosy meant living outside the camp. It was a forlorn existence. In Leviticus chapter 13,

Israelite law said of such people, they must live alone. Outside the

camp was also where the carcasses of the sacrificial bulls were burned. Outside the camp was not

where you wanted to be. This harsh reality breathes life into the statement about Jesus in Hebrews

Chapter 13. Let us then go to him outside the

camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. Jesus was crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem, a significant

point when we study the Hebrew sacrificial system. We want to be popular, to be honored, to live

comfortable lives. But God calls us to go

outside the camp, where the disgrace is. That's where we'll find the vendor with Hansen's

disease. That's where we'll find people the world has rejected. That's where we'll find

Jesus.

Thank you. rejected. That's where we'll find Jesus. Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from Hebrews chapter 13, verses 11 through 16. The high priest carries the blood of animals

into the most holy place as a sin offering,

but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate

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