The Wednesday Word 5.17.2023
1 Peter 1:13-25 New Living
Translation
13 So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. 14 So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. 15 But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. 16 For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.” 17 And remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time here as “temporary residents.” 18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. 19 It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. 20 God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake. 21 Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory. 22 You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart.23 For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God. 24 As the Scriptures say,
“People are like grass;
their beauty is like a flower in the
field.
The grass withers and the flower fades.
25 But
the word of the Lord remains forever.”
And that word is the Good News that
was preached to you.
One of the first steps that a person
must take on the road to following Christ is to acknowledge and accept their
own inconsequence. Peter quotes Isaiah 40 to remind us that we are just like
the grass growing in the field. We sprout up, bloom, wither and disintegrate.
One blade in a sea of a million. Over time, one blade amongst a
bazillion. As
Shakespeare said, “Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and
frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by
an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” I believe this to be
true.
What gives our lives meaning is the
righteousness, the compassion, the love embodied in our Savior. It is his
holiness that brings us goodness. The breath of God that spoke our world into
existence and gave us this life is still within us. If only we would hear the
Word that he is still speaking to us every day! It is written down for us to
study and contemplate and it is lived out in the world around us. If we could
only stop thinking so much of ourselves and think more on Our Heavenly Father!
Peter has some good advice for us in this passage…something to pray about.
Don’t forget to look for the Lord
today. Vicki H.
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