You are God's People

The People of God Set Priorities
Hope and Confidence Come from God
Trust God's Promises

1 Peter 2:4-10

The Message

The Stone

^4-8 Welcome to the living Stone, the source of life. The workmen took one look and threw it out; God set it in the place of honor. Present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life, in which you’ll serve as holy priests offering Christ-approved lives up to God. The Scriptures provide precedent:

Look! I’m setting a stone in Zion,
    a cornerstone in the place of honor.
Whoever trusts in this stone as a foundation
    will never have cause to regret it.

To you who trust him, he’s a Stone to be proud of, but to those who refuse to trust him,

The stone the workmen threw out
    is now the chief foundation stone.

For the untrusting it’s

. . . a stone to trip over,
    a boulder blocking the way.

They trip and fall because they refuse to obey, just as predicted.

^9-10 But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.

For Reflection

Thank God for the misfits!  As a high school and college teacher of speech and theater, I was often struck by the value of the position God threw me into.  Many times the best students in my classes, those who won many awards for their abilities, were not always the "preferred" student recommended by other teachers.  They were not always the popular mainstream acceptable students.  Often they were "off beat." 

Even with their successes, many were not given equitable treatment in the established community.  No, they were not conformist.  Yes, they were sometimes challenging.  Yes they were always responsive to a caring environment which encouraged them to find their own way of being successful.  I always felt blessed to be given a chance to be part of their lives.

I discovered teaching was not about me. It always was about the student.  It was about creating a sanctuary where error was seen as the pathway to progress, to be embraced as a scientist will embrace negative findings in an experiment and use them to design new and fruitful ways to progress. 

And so it is with human interactions.  Relationships are evolutionary.  They grow, mature and end and leave in their wake a slow progression toward perfection.  At least that's how I see the world.  I trust in the discarded stones.

Pray

that you see the world from God's eyes.  Pray that you will embrace culture's discards.  Pray that you will value culture's rejects as precious diamonds.  Pray that you will learn to create rather than cripple.  Pray that you will present yourself as a discarded stone, a child of God, a right fit in the temple of the everlasting.