Monday, September 2, 2019
The end of the world is coming soon. Therefore, be earnest and disciplined in your prayers. Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay. God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen. 1 Peter 4:7-11[2]
Grandchildren are an
incredible joy in many ways…sometimes you get surprised! Here’s an example from my daughter’s Face Book
page; she wrote:
With the boys starting at new schools this year we’ve
been anxiously asking how their days have gone. If you know Jonah (age
11), you know he has never ventured from bringing his lunch to school so when
he offered to try school lunch this year I was ecstatic. Thoughts for
today, from him...
J: “Lunch was good
today.”
Me: “awesome!
What’d you have?”
J: “the outside of a corn dog.”[3]
Sometimes it’s fear that makes
us cautious; sometimes it’s wise prudence.
All of us choose very carefully how deeply we’ll venture into change. Sometimes the outside of a corn dog will do
for now.
That old question about what
three things you’d take with you if you’re going to spend the rest of your life
on a deserted island is something the apostle Peter must’ve thought about deeply
before he wrote this epistle. His three
choices, and what he wanted his flock to excel in, were prayer for
others, loving deeply, and offering hospitality. Did you notice none of those can be bought on
Amazon.com?
For Peter, end-of-the-world
priorities have little to do with the balance sheet of stuff. When all is said and done nobody is going to
care what you’ve managed to accumulate, money, lands, or a warehouse full of
antiques and toys. He cautions his
readers to use everything God has placed in their hands to serve
one another. That’s a whole universe
opposite of gaining stuff for yourself. It
took Peter awhile to learn this, but he reminds us that, in the end, the only standard
by which we will be judged is how well we did with Jesus’ command:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35
For You Today
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.
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[1]
Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com Unless
otherwise noted, Scripture used from The
New Living Translation©
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