But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (II Peter 2:9)
I wonder how long it took Peter to
understand this, or Paul, or Jerome, or Martin Luther, or you… I don’t think I
get this yet – at least, not in a good way. It’d be easy if we were chosen
because we’re special. But life tends to
show us that we’re not special in the way(s) we like to think we are. We aren’t
even chosen because we have potential. Spoiler alert: in a lot of ways, we’re like
Harry Potter. Everryone was so in awe of him. He was clearly the chosen one –
the prophesied one. And when you get to the end of the last book, the boy that everyone
ignored – the boy who was not Harry Potter, defeated the enemy and saved the
day. And still, we want to be Harry. No one wants to be Nigel. And we are Harry
– major disappointments in everything we are supposed to do and never measuring
up to our expectations – or theirs – or God’s.
And yet, we are chosen. We are adopted into the royal family and made
priests. Priests. Put away the thoughts of Roman Catholic priests. We’re the
ones who get to work in the temple, to be, in effect, Jesus’ assistants. We are
called to be all that a nation or a people should be. And even when we fail,
God gives us grace, and helps us to learn and to overcome. We are chosen to declare
His praises. That should be the highlight of our day. Instead, we focus on the
cloudy weather, the hot weather, the cold weather, dead refrigerators, sore
backs, illnesses… Today's challenge is to give one word of praise to or about God. It’s time we
started doing our jobs.
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