IN THE STILLNESS

April 19, 2020

1 Peter 2: 9-10, 16a (NRSV)

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts 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….As servants of God, live as free people.

These words are from that rock, Simon Peter, that flawed man forgiven by God’s mercy who lived into who and Whose he was. A man able to share those same words of truth with others so that we, too, might remember who and Whose we are as well!

Being chosen doesn’t mean being chosen as the golden children of God, but rather being chosen by God means being chosen to for a job – blessed to be a blessing to all the world as we live the Christ life of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation into the lives of all others – so that all might know Christ and that they too are chosen!

A prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.