Daily Devotions and Podcasts

SCRIPTURE  1 Peter 2.9-12 But you are God's chosen and special people. You are a group of royal priests and a holy nation. God has brought you out of darkness into divine marvelous light. Now you must tell all the wonderful things that God has done. The Scriptures say, "Once you were nobody. Now, you are God's people. At one time no one had pity on you. Now God has treated you with kindness.” Dear friends, you are foreigners and strangers on this earth. So, I beg you not to surrender to those desires that fight against you. Always let others see you behaving properly, even though they may still accuse you of doing wrong. Then on the day of judgment, they will honor God by telling the good things they saw you do. WORDS OF HOPE Today’s Scripture reading has had many interpretations throughout the centuries after it was written by or in the name of one of Jesus’ most volatile and determined Disciples. Whether Simon Peter himself wrote it or not, it is certainly written in the spirit of the truehearted man we met in the Gospels and Acts. Peter’s audience was made up of brand-new followers of Jesus, many of whom had grown up according to the letter of the Hebrew laws with a priest as their guide and interpreter. Now, Peter is reminding them that each of them is a high priest with direct access to God, granted through the words of Jesus himself. Their faith has made them the chosen ones whose words and actions were to become standards for their current followers, and it turned out, for future Christ-followers in thousands of generations to come. Simply stated, he was reminding them to take their responsibility seriously. They were part of Jesus’ Way now, with standards foreign to the tumult of the oppressive Roman Empire, a world of rulers who considered themselves gods, whose civilization was centered on mindless wars, hate, lies, bigotry, making the rich richer while starving the poor. Peter was both pleading and demanding that the followers of Christ’s Way must not bow in surrender to this culture of hate, not become a part of it, nor should they even give the impression they were sympathetic to any of it. They now belonged to Jesus and his culture of Love. Peter still speaks to us today, and loud and clear as always. Are we the chosen people? You bet we are! If we, or any other people of faith elsewhere in the world, have chosen to follow the words and example of Jesus Christ, our only choice is to be and to perpetuate his unconditional Love; to God, ourselves, and all of our neighbors, that love which triumphed, even over death, and perpetually saves us from corrupt systems that should have died in the first century. We are commissioned to serve Christ, not just to proclaim we are born again. Following Jesus does not mean to arrogantly award ourselves with a shallow label of “Christian” only to oppress others into becoming clones of us. We are chosen to love them, to BE Christ in the world. Nothing less will do. PRAYER God of Truth and Justice, thank you for being the Way, for directing us to your path, and for never leaving us stranded without your guiding presence. Amen DEVOTION AUTHOR Dan Peeler Order of St. Francis and St. Clare