Arise: The Life and Ministry of Tabitha - 10 May, 2026

Strong and courageous, do not be afraid, do not be discouraged,

for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

So said Joshua to the children of Israel as they were ready to

go into the Promised Land. Now y'all he and Caleb were it.

The rest of the generations had not trusted the Lord and had

spent 40 years walking in circles till they died off.

Joshua of anybody had reasons to lack some courage.

He had some reasons to be worried because his people had

already shown them they weren't faithful.

But this generation learned from their parents mistakes, and so

they sent spies in, and the spies went to Rahab.

Rahab. We call her a prostitute or a

harlot, and may well have been, but the word also means

innkeeper. So before we disparage her too

much, we might just say she was a working woman when other women

weren't. And as Rahab takes in the spies,

she is acting with kind hospitality, but she is also

acting with thoughtfulness for her family, as we will see.

And so we'll stay on rehab for just a second more.

She hides those spies. She lies for those spies, and

she sends those spies over the side saying, you keep your

promise to me. I have been kind to you.

Now you be kind to me. And I want to say that as we sit

here together on Mother's Day now, we want to think about what

does it mean to be kind? Because I feel like if you only

watch TV, you get rather one-dimensional kind.

Sweet Mamas. But most of us are deeply human.

I was laughing this morning preparing to preach the sermon

on kindness, and my child asked me to deal with a spider not

once but twice. And I'm running behind.

And I stopped being kind because I was like, come on, I got to

get things done, not be Jason spiders.

And I was like, oh, look at that.

So parenting shows us very quickly what is happening in our

real hearts. And so the moms of our church

are helping me with this message or some of the moms.

And so I want to read to you what mom in our church has said

that parenting has taught me that we need to model kindness

for others. And sometimes that means we are

kind when others are not. And that's hard.

It's hard to be kind when someone else is not.

And sometimes in those moments, we have to be kind for our

children because they are watching how we handle

difficulties more than how I was just telling them that they need

to be kind. Rahab modelled hospitality to

those spies so that they would have a model of being hospitable

to her when they came in violence.

And as a mom, sometimes you're having to extend a kindness you

do not have. But I'll also say sometimes as a

child you are extending A kindness to your parents that

you don't feel you have. And we want to think about today

all the complexities that are a part of human interaction and

that that's real. That is much more real and

honest than just the feel good moms are great because as a mom,

I can say I'm sometimes not great.

I've looked at my child and said I'm an equal opportunity

screamer. OK, When you say that, you know,

as a Mama, you've lost it in that moment.

And So what I'm going to say is we as moms are also deeply human

and deeply need the kindness of God in helping us be better.

And we also need to extend that to all the different ways of

being human. So Rahab is not our focus, but I

want you to have Rahab in your mind as we look now.

In Acts Chapter 9, as Peter travelled about to the country,

Acts 9 · chapter mention

he went to visit the Lord's people who lived in Leda, where

he found a man named Aeneas who was paralysed and had been

bedridden for eight years. Aeneas, Peter said to him, Jesus

Christ heals you get up and roll up your mat immediately.

Aeneas got up and all those who lived in Leda and Sharon saw him

and turned to the Lord. When we act in the kindness of

God, not just the person, maybe our attention is focused on

others are impacted. In Joppa there was a disciple

named Tabitha. In Greek her name is Dorcas.

She was always doing good and helping the poor.

About that time she became sick and died, and her body was

washed and placed in an upstairs room.

Lita was near Joppa. So when the disciples heard that

Peter was in Lita, they sent two men to him and urged him, Please

come at once. Peter went with him, and when he

arrived he was taken upstairs to the room.

All the widows stood around him crying and showing him the robes

and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still

with them. Peter sent them all out of the

room. Then he got down on his knees

and prayed. Turning towards the dead woman

he said, Tabitha, get up. She opened her eyes and seeing

Peter, she sat up and he took her by the hand and helped her

to her feet. And then he called for the

believers, especially the widows, and presented her to

them alive. This became known all over Joppa

and many people believed in the Lord.

Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a Tanner named Simon.

Now, Peter, has anybody ever been tired and maybe too tired

to be kind? You cannot be asking me for one.

You know, friends and family don't have crises on our cycles

of energy schedules. Crises just happen and somebody

just calls. And you're like, I could help

you better in a little bit, but right now isn't a good time.

That's not how crises work. So with Peter, here is what we

have. He healed Aeneas that Peter had

been doing, he had been doing in Jerusalem.

Peter seems confident. But let's also think about

Peter. We've looked at him several

times in the last few weeks. Peter had experienced the

kindness of Jesus to restore him after the betrayal of

friendship. So Peter had walked with Jesus

and seen his healing ministry, but he had also experienced the

kindness of God. Then he heals Aneus.

He gets asked. He was enjoying these people.

There was a moment to be enjoyed here.

But people come and they invite him to Joppa.

And so he goes and there he is literally life giving to

Tabitha, but he is also life giving to that church.

If you notice in this church there are two people named,

there's Dorcas Tabatha, she had, see, she was intercultural.

She had an Aramaic name and she had a Greek name.

Do any of you have more than one language names?

My name is Ellen. My sign name is E Over the

Heart. And my name in a community that

I was a part of as a child was Elena.

So I have three names and a few nicknames that aren't worth

saying here. So she was just like that.

Now I also want to say I don't know what your Sunday school is

like, but my Sunday school telling of her had her sweet and

easy. But the truth is, is that she

was generous and kind and that church history and understanding

of this was close to the coast. It's that she's probably a

businesswoman, too. How else could she have been

generous with the clothes if she did not have the resources for

that end? So she's an intercultural

businesswoman. And we have to suspect that she

and Simon were leaders in the local church.

Otherwise why are they getting named in the New Testament?

They were known by the other people in the church and so

Peter is infusing into this community what they needed,

which was life giving. Now I want you to think about

actually being Peter. Peter had seen Jesus do this,

but up until now, Peter had not been a part of bringing anybody

else back to life. This is an act of courage, of

faith. Peter had known people who had

died. Peter had seen Jesus heal his

mother-in-law, heal all the people we read about in the New

Testament. And Peter had known that he had

called Lazarus out of the grave. He had known Jesus himself was

resurrected. But many if you go back and you

read, I believe it's Luke 7 where Jesus heals, brings back

to life the daughter of Jarius, the synagogue ruler verses the

verbs, everything is parallel. Why?

Because G Peter learned from Jesus how to be kind and how to

have the courage to call out someone into a life giving

stature and return to life. Resuscitate her.

This isn't her resurrected body. This is a resuscitation.

She would die again. Also in Peter's courage to be

kind, to go from one place where things were looking good for him

with Aeneas and Lita to Joppa because the disciples asked for

help. Many in both regions were coming

to know Jesus. And also, if we kept reading, we

would find that Peter's courage had him in the place he needed

to be when Cornelius the centurion had a dream, because

he's in Simon, Simon the Tanner's house when Cornelius's

men were. Cornelius had a vision sent for

Peter, and there he goes in all of Cornelius's house.

And so I just want you to see in this story, there is courage to

be life giving for other people. And it may take you places you

didn't expect to go and energy you didn't expect to have.

And so I also want us to look at what some of our moms said for

this. The way we treat our kids shapes

their concept of kindness. Oh my gosh, I know that.

And yet this morning, I'm impatient about spiders.

What's wrong with me? Love and kindness are

intertwined. If a Mama is having to work for

that to sometimes be true to the children who are most precious,

how much more true is that for somebody we think is an adult

and should be competent and should be acting better

themselves? And so the way we treat other

people says more about how we understand God and how His love

and kindness is intertwined into our life than it does to the

recipient of our kindness or the lack thereof.

Peter went and did these things that changed Aeneas and

Tabitha's life and the widow's lives and the church and Simon's

life and Cornelius's household and the people that accepted him

in this whole region because he knew Jesus.

And Jesus's love and kindness and the power of that spirit

were intertwined in him. And so if there is a roommate

you're having trouble being kind to, or a sibling or a cousin or

a parent or a neighbor, that's real.

I'm not dismissing whatever they've done.

I'd probably agree and get righteously indignant with you.

But the kindness of God and His love intertwined in our life

allows us to be a model of the grace of God.

Not just Mamas to parents, children, but you to those all

around you. Now Peter is not the only

courageous person in our story in Acts, we also have Dorcas

Tabitha. Now, this is from a 4th century

funeral box, basically, and I just want you to think she had

the courage to be kind. Now, the business woman in her

would have business people who would say, well, they need to

work hard and make their own money.

Why are you helping them? All right.

And then have you had friends who've been widowed?

Probably not yet. Many of you.

When people are in deep grief or loss, they're not always

pleasant to be around. And when people have fear of

their future, they're a little bit clingy.

You're asking? It's not always fun.

Widows in this society were often struggling because there

were limits on what they could and could not do.

And so Dorcas and or Tabitha, I go back and forth with her name.

It's the same human. She had to have the courage to

be kind. You know, it sounds like it is

beautiful and easy. Michaela Yoon.

Our Michaela Yoon is probably one of the most consistently

kind humans I've known in my entire life.

Michaela Yoon, do you know that she sits in court cases?

And here's the worst of humanity as she translates for people who

have committed crimes. She is kind not just because

God's wired her, but because the Spirit of Jesus allows her to

sit for work in the worst things humans do and then pray for them

and just want them to have justice.

In my mind, I have Torque as Tabitha's character, kind of

like Michaela, where it there's so much kindness that you forget

the courage and the strength and the depth that is behind that.

And I would wish for each of you to know Jesus's love and have it

so intertwined in your being that you would be known for

doing good and being generous. Now do you see my little blue

circle? This was in the 3rd century, so

it was about 300 years after this story.

But the story is aware of the diversity of Joppa and so I

wouldn't know this if some other specialist hadn't told me.

But do you see the little cap? Dorcas is the one in the bed

with the hand on the head. Do you see how the shorter widow

with the has like a hat on? This is a Phrygian cap.

Why does that even matter? Well, let me say why it matters

because it was a different people group it they weren't

hers. And yet she is extending

kindness beyond just her community and the kindness of

God our Lord came for all the nations.

And here is an example of the early Christians deeply

understanding that our expressions of the love and

kindness of God extends beyond who we think of as our people.

So when Acts 936 says in Joppa there was a disciple named

Tabitha in Greek her name is Dorcas.

She was always doing good and helping the poor.

There was a extension, there was a reputation that could be

summed up in this. Now let's talk about the other

couraging pieces that are there. The disciples who went and asked

Peter to come had to have some courage.

And what they do is that they go.

They were sent, admittedly, but they go and said please come at

once. There is faith in that, yeah,

she's already dead. Why is he saying please come at

once? There is courage to ask for help

now. But people in the ancient world

were much closer to death than people in our modern world.

They knew the dead people didn't usually rise again.

They knew that sickness could be immediate and deadly.

They sent for Peter's help and then Peter asked the Lord for

help in the healing because we come down where he sent

everybody out of the room. He didn't want to show or a

three ring circus. He's also modeling what Jesus

had done. He's following his teacher's

example. And then he got down on his

knees and he prayed and he looked and he said get up.

She opened her eyes and seeing Peter, she sat up and he took

her by the hand and helped her to her feet.

And then he called the believers.

So there is the asking of a Christian brother, and then

there is the asking of the Lord. And the Lord granted that.

Now we can go the next one. What does this mean?

I want us to come back to Rahab and I want us to read This is

verses from Joshua 2. Now then, please swear to me by

the Lord that you will show kindness to my family, because I

have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign that you

will spare the lives of my father and mother, brothers and

sisters and all who belong to them, and that you will save us

from death, our lives for your lives.

The men assured her if you don't tell what we are doing, we will

treat you kindly and faithfully when the Lord gives us the land.

This story with Rahab is happening about 1400 years

before the story of Tabitha. Tabitha's story is about 2000

years before us. But what I want to say is that

Rahab. Extended a kindness, Rahab

received a kindness. And actually, if we can follow

rabbinical tradition and trust it, Rahab ended up marrying one

of these spies. So they weren't just kind to

her. There was some actual pragmatics

in her family life that shifted. But what I want to say is that

we have examples. Rahab, at the time of the

telling, was not a mom biologically, but functionally.

She was looking to be life giving to others.

You know, that is what Eve's name means, giver of life.

And do you realize that whether or not you're a parent, we all

can choose to be life giving. But to be life giving to others

takes courage. It takes energy and it takes

walking with the One who is love and kindness himself and will

show us how now. Rahab was looking to preserve

their lives, but she changed the trajectory of her family's

knowing God, not just staying alive.

Tabitha and Dorcas, same person, just don't know which name.

You're like, I'm just going to stick with Tabitha from now on.

She was living out and being kind because that was an

expression of her faith. The doing good Ephesians, we

have the same word for the believers are equipped for every

good work. You are already ready for these.

You are already doing these in many ways.

It's just sometimes we think, well, if I do too much, they

won't learn to help themselves. Well, I'm just so depleted.

Oh, I don't want to be around people that give off those bad

vibes. I need to be around positive

people. And we have a litany of reasons

that we distance ourselves. Now I am not saying don't have

good boundaries, but I believe that the Spirit of Jesus often

calls us to be kind, to do good well beyond what would seem

logical to our society and you. I'm realizing I missed one

parenting slide that I didn't mean to.

I had a couple in there. But in all of this, there was a

theme is that parenting helps the moms in our church realize

it is a choice, it is a modeling, and it is not easy.

So if it is not easy for your kids that actually you love, how

much harder is it for peers? And yet that is what we have

been called to. All right, Christine, And so I

want you to think about the cycle of kindness.

Jesus came as the presence of God on earth Incarnate to show

the kindness of God. And he, very pragmatically, as

I've already mentioned, show this to Peter.

And as he showed it, he restored Peter into intimate relationship

as Craig preached around do you love me, Feed my sheep.

And now we're getting to see Peter do some of this feeding

the sheep and we see Dorcas coming back to life.

But also realize this cycle I, let's be honest, Canva didn't

have a picture for the all over the place kindness that the

Gospel and Acts show. Jesus was kind.

Jesus's spirit had given kindness to Tabatha and now

she's giving it to the widows. The widows are giving it back to

her by having the people go get Peter.

Peter is showing kindness to the widows and Dorcas.

There are cycles of kindness and you don't always know who

benefits from the fact that you are kind to someone today and

they learn from how you are kind and then it goes to someone

else. Y'all this week I got to the

doctor's office 5 minutes late with the parkade.

Then my phone credit card wouldn't be read read.

And then I realized I didn't have my wallet and then I was

like I'm going to get not get my appointment.

I really needed this appointment.

And I go to the security guard and I'm like, where can I pay

that? I'm not underground.

And I'm like by this point, not crying but almost crying.

And y'all, he was about your age and I just thought he's going to

be like, that is your problem. But you know what he did?

He tried a few things and they didn't work.

And he went in his break room and he said just wait for me.

And he brought his credit card. Y'all, he didn't know me from

Eve. I did.

I did E transfer him, but he didn't know I was going to do

that. He he works right across the

street from where you work and I need to introduce you Aiden

because I need him to come to know Jesus too.

His kindness made me patient when I got to the reception.

And she was not kind because I was now 20 minutes late instead

of 5 minutes late. And I would have usually been a

little bit short too, because she was being short.

But I had just experienced extraordinary kindness and it

changed how I behaved. And it put me in a cycle of

kindness and in spirit of prayer for this young man.

And you can be just like this security guard who was this

week. And So what I want to say, if

you think a Mama has superpowers of kindness, you are wrong.

Mamas just have more practice at getting their kindness tested

because sometimes Children Act the fool and you don't feel

patient and kind. And so you asked Jesus to help

you live into cycles of kindness.

And then it does not matter the biology of whether you are a

parent or not, you become a life giver because you are treating

people the way their Heavenly Father would have them treated.

All right, Our book that we are reading has an excellent

reminder that kindness is not these grand big things, but that

the best portion of a good person's life is the little

nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.

It's the seat you give to somebody on the bus that isn't

ancient. It is the sharing a cough drop

when somebody's coughing in class.

Whatever the spirit prompts you to do, you do not have to

understand why we were at a prayer breakfast this week and

somebody robbed Nash. You can go watch him online if

you haven't, because he's got a big, exciting, amazing story of

how God's restored his joy. But in it, he was working with a

teenager who was despairing of life and had already attempted

on his own. And he said, part of it is you

just have big emotions. Look around, Do you notice

anybody? And he goes, well, yeah, I'm

kind of wondering about that Lady over there.

And he goes, well, let's go see. And he goes, ma'am, is there any

way we could help you rank stranger, trying to make a point

to this teenager that that his empathy or intuition that was

overwhelming him had a good and beautiful purpose.

And the woman started crying. And she was an older woman who

couldn't bend. And she had been waiting for 30

minutes for somebody to tie her shoe because she was also scared

of falling and breaking her other hip.

And this teenager who didn't know what to do with his big

emotions was actually gifted by God to be aware and sensitive.

And so when you sense a little prompting this week, act because

we don't want to show contempt for the riches of God's kindness

to us. God has shown us His kindness,

His forbearance and patience, not realizing that God's

kindness is intended to lead you to repentance.

And you know what? I think we get to see in the

story of Tabitha Peter's repentance in living color.

We get to see how the Spirit of God restored Peter, how Jesus

gave him a task and he actually was doing it.

So when we think of repentance, do any of you have some movie

version of self flagellating and beating?

Please get rid of that. And what we want to think of

about repentance is I might need to change my mind on some

things. I've had to change my mind where

I've told someone asking for money.

Yeah, not today. I can't.

I was, my kids were all around. It was crazy.

We and I said, yeah, I, I can't right now.

It was just 'cause I was busy and I wasn't sure Michaela was a

child and she looked at me and she went Mama and I was rightly

rebuked. And guess what?

I went digging in my bag and I found some change for the man

because I needed to have a change of heart.

I was overwhelmed by what I was doing in the moment and could

not have a generosity of spirit. So repentance doesn't just mean

what you do at the end of the day.

Praying it might mean I start to walk away and then I come back

and say, you know, I am sorry I said that in that tone.

That's a repentance act because it's a change of what this Lord.

And so the Lord has been so very, very, very kind to us.

And let's let His kindness lead us into a change of mind, to a

softening of our hearts. And I don't know who makes it

hard for you to be kind, but I think we all have people where

it's harder. And that is where the Lord wants

us to repent and to extend His kindness in the healthiest of

ways. So I would ask that you would

join me in praying. Those of you that use the Lectio

app will find that this is how you start your morning.

I also want to acknowledge Aiden made this graphic for us and

moms, we have one of these printed for each of you so that

you can be blessed by Aiden today.

So join me as we pray. Father, help me to live this day

to the full, being true to you in every way.

Jesus, help me to give myself away to others, being kind to

everyone I meet. Spirit, help me to love the

lost, proclaiming Christ in all I do and say Amen.

Thank you.