Quick post today as I race from Colchester to Hyde Park to Cambridge to Burlington and back to Colchester again tonight, where I am dog sitting from my mom while she undergoes some tests. I Peter 1 deserves not just its own post, but its own book. It's chockful of awesome positional truth and applications. (It also sounds a little like Hebrews - "strangers in this world" used twice, and has a reminder that the new covenant demands more obedience than the old.) But time and space permit only two paltry observations:
V. 7 - My faith response to trials will in glory, praise and honor for Jesus when he returns. So not only does my responding to death, sickness, loneliness, etc. in faith make life more bearable for me now, it will cause praise and honor fireworks in heaven! Peter doesn't say how exactly that works. But it's even more incentive, were any needed, to say "yes" to God.
V. 22-23 - Every believing Saharan tribesman, every affluent, faith-filled Anglican rector from Lincolnshire, every old man with black skin lifting his hands in praise in an inner-city storefront gospel church, is my brother. Forever. And our father is God, who intentionally and irrevocably placed the same imperishable seed of eternal life in them that He has placed in me. I am a brother forever, bound by God's love and command, to every Baptist, Catholic, Democrat, Republican, and Scranton, Pennsylvanian who believes. I am a member of the biggest, most blessed family on earth. Or in heaven! Hallelujah!
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