Monday Devotional: May 1, 2023

Bible Reading: 1 Peter 2:2-10 (CEB)

² Instead, like a newborn baby, desire the pure milk of the word. Nourished by it, you will grow into salvation, ³ since you have tasted that the Lord is good. ⁴ Now you are coming to him as to a living stone. Even though this stone was rejected by humans, from God’s perspective it is chosen, valuable. ⁵ You yourselves are being built like living stones into a spiritual temple. You are being made into a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶ Thus it is written in scripture, Look! I am laying a cornerstone in Zion, chosen, valuable. The person who believes in him will never be shamed. ⁷ So God honors you who believe. For those who refuse to believe, though, the stone the builders tossed aside has become the capstone. ⁸ This is a stone that makes people stumble and a rock that makes them fall. Because they refuse to believe in the word, they stumble. Indeed, this is the end to which they were appointed. ⁹ But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who are God’s own possession. You have become this people so that you may speak of the wonderful acts of the one who called you out of darkness into his amazing light. ¹⁰ Once you weren’t a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you hadn’t received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Peter is the disciple who seems to be in the right place at the right time. On the seashore of Galilee, fisherman Simon, always ready for an adventure, hears the call of invitation and says in so many ways, “Yes, I’m in!” Dropping his nets, he kisses that life goodbye. And so it goes: the camping trip up a mountain and the witness of the Transfiguration; Peter, who impulsively without hesitation jumps out of the boat, then instinctively moves toward his Messiah. Yet stories of Peter moving away from the Lord offset some of these events. He finally denies Jesus.

Who better to help us find our identity in Christ than Peter? He knows from personal experience about long-term commitment to Jesus: “a stone that makes (us) stumble and a rock that makes (us) fall.” But Peter has learned that God builds the house, and Jesus Christ is the cornerstone. The pupil becomes the teacher. And commitment to this understanding makes believers “living stone(s)” who are precious in God’s sight.

We are constantly called into the covenant relationship as God’s chosen people, called to move toward God. It is a daily endeavor that occurs moment by moment. When I move toward the Wonderful Counselor, words flow more freely onto the page. But when uncertainty and fear of failure creep through the cracks in my confidence, I move away from living confidently as a child of God. Fortunately, this scripture speaks to us when we want to turn away and deny the claim that we are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.”

Who is this guy? Peter was the impulsive rock on whom Jesus would build his church — a man who at one time moved away but with the taste of God’s goodness on his tongue was “called…out of darkness into his marvelous light!”

Prayer

Lord, may we ever move toward you. We are the chosen ones. Amen.

By Bradford Bosworth, The Upper Room Disciplines 2017, page 164.