But you are

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9-10)

Interesting note: "nation" is the Greek ethnos, which generally referred to "a race, a people, the Gentiles". This usually meant unbelieving Gentiles, or non-Jews, distinct and separate from Jewish people.

So when Peter says "holy nation", it was probably far more shockingly magnificent to the original readers than it is to us. I wonder if they dwelt on that concept - these Gentile dogs, formerly cut off from the blessings and promises of the people of God, have now been declared holy, set apart for God, declared to be the people of God. Imagine that. Truly Christ tore the veil. Truly Christ abolished the enmity. The Jewish believers probably thought of "holy nation [holy Gentiles]" as an oxymoron. How is it possible?

It is possible only through Christ and His excellencies, His light, and His mercy. 

put away

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. (1 Peter 2:1)

I find it interesting, when reading this passage, that Peter puts forth the image of newborn infants. When I see the command to put away (put off, renounce, throw away) these things - malice, deceit, hypocrisy, etc. - I think of two things:

1) An infant's clothing needs changing. Imagine if a mother neglected to change her baby's diaper, or change his sleeper after he threw up all over it. The baby would suffer. He would get rashes. He would be sore. All of these things, malice and slander and hypocrisy and everything else, all of these things are like a dirty diaper or soiled clothes. Peter tells us to change. To put these things away. They only hurt us.

2) An infant can't change his clothes by himself. Just as a baby needs help to dress himself, so we need the help of the Holy Spirit in dressing us in "the robes of Christ", in becoming Christlike, in putting off our old, soiled rags and putting on our new, rich garments.

Peter cautions us against what corrupts and defiles. He presents us with the "pure spiritual milk" of the gospel of Christ Jesus, the living stone, chosen and precious. Run to Him.

Rise Up, O Church of God

Rise up, O men of God!

His kingdom tarries long.

Bring in the day of brotherhood

And end the night of wrong.

 

Let women all rise up!

Have done with lesser things.

Give heart and mind and soul and strength

To serve the King of kings.

 

Rise up, O men of God!

The church for you doth wait,

Her strength unequal to her task;

Rise up, and make her great!

 

Lift high the cross of Christ!

Tread where his feet have trod.

Disciples of the Son of Man,

Rise up, O church of God!

---William P. Merrill

Go read something

Recently, I was challenged to write five hundred words in a day. My mind flew from one end of the spectrum to the other in rapid succession.

"Five hundred words," I thought. "That's easy!" 

"Five hundred words," I thought. "That's a lot..."

It's funny how perspective changes things. 

More often than not, I wish to write words that mean something. I have been known to jot down inane gibberish, but in general, my mind fixes upon the meaning behind words. 

Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly creative (or obsessed, take your pick), I can write thousands of words. I wrote about 14,000 words in a single day once - but that was because I was transcribing, and it was my job. It becomes more difficult to write that many words when you are writing as an expression of what is within your own soul - when you begin to think of pictures and story lines along with the words. When I write from my heart, the message is more difficult to transform into something intelligible. The pictures in my mind from my own stories and heroes have to be translated into words, words, words, and that can be difficult. It takes time and effort.

I think that's why I often gravitate toward poetry - poetry expresses ideas in less words, without losing any of the meaning. It can take five pages to capture the same image as you can express in five lines of poetry. I don't even try to imagine I am at such a skilled poetic level; I'm just saying it's possible. Christina Rossetti does it.

It's not really fair to leave it at poetry. Prose has its own beauty, its own expression, its own meaning. Sometimes prose can be poetic in its own way, musical even. Writing can be an expression of beauty, like the heart-wrenching song of a violin. It can stir you. Sometimes I read prose or poetry and I become fired up. At other times, I relax as I read, the words seeming to draw me close, settling in. At other times, I want to laugh, or weep, or sigh deep down in my heart as I turn each page.

There is a power to words, a power not easily expressed. It is just there, clearly seen, like an ink stain on a brand-new beige carpet, or a child's fingerprints on the wall. You read and you feel it, you sense that in reading there is more to the words. You are a part of something, drawn in above and beyond mere sentence construction. There is something, something...

Is it monstrous? Will it tear you apart and make you tremble with a thousand fears? Is it mysterious, like a mourning dove sitting on a branch, singing songs into the mist of morning? Is it gentle, like the tender, safe caress of a mother to her newborn? Is it exciting, climbing to the very peaks of adventure?

Well, what are you waiting for? Find out. 

Not because...but God

I do not have many thoughts this lunch hour, but these Scripture passages have been rolling around in my mind today:

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 7:7-8)

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

Cursed

I've been thinking this week about Jesus' death and resurrection (shocker!). A couple of days ago, as I read through Deuteronomy, it struck me just how much Jesus took on for my sake. 

Deuteronomy chapters 27 and 28 list many curses at length, showing the consequences of disobedience. You can read them if you like. The Israelites are warned of what will happen - what they will do to themselves - if they turn away from God. The horror struck me sharply, mainly because I read it in close proximity to Good Friday. These curses would fall upon us just the same had Jesus not taken the curse upon Himself. 

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. (Galatians 3:13-14)

It's not just the Israelites of old, either. Paul presents, as he often does, the stark contrast between what we were and what we are: 

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)

Jesus makes all the difference. In light of the chapters in Deuteronomy, reading Isaiah 53 seems all the more potent: 

Who has believed what he has heard from us?

And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

For he grew up before him like a young plant,

and like a root out of dry ground;

he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,

and no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men;

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the LORD has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,

yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

so he opened not his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away;

and as for his generation, who considered

that he was cut off out of the land of the living,

stricken for the transgression of my people?

And they made his grave with the wicked

and with a rich man in his death,

although he had done no violence,

and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;

he has put him to grief;

when his soul makes an offering for guilt,

he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;

the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;

by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

make many to be accounted righteous,

and he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,

and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,

because he poured out his soul to death

and was numbered with the transgressors;

yet he bore the sin of many,

and makes intercession for the transgressors.

(Isaiah 53:1-12)