Peter, A Breath of Fresh Air
It is the season of growing and mowing grass. The rains fall and the grass grows faster. You can almost hear it reach out and up as it looks for the sun after the rains. In the hot summer sun, grass will grow better in the shade. Mm.
When our kids were teenagers, we were getting ready to mow and clean the yard. One of our kids asked, “Why is it that grass grows deeper and greener here, in this spot?” We gave them a lesson about septic tanks and leech fields and how dirty water from the house travels to this place. The crap, (pardon the real), of our lives is displayed here and the grass grows as a result. It is even nourished by it and grows faster and deeper than the grass around it. Hence, if we don’t mow said grass, we will become engulfed by it if we stand here much longer discussing it. The grass is growing right under your feet as we speak! Let’s get to mowing!I think of that episode as we read the beginning of Peter’s second letter to believers who call Jesus Master and Lord of their lives. We can’t just stand around discussing Christianity, we need to confirm it with our lives. God chose us. Our job is is to let Him do His work in us, refining us, trimming the grass under our feet that might entangle us so that the characteristics of Christ would take hold and be developed in us.
“Don’t let the grass grow under your feet!”, Peter warns. That means laying self down asap and allowing God to work in us. “Don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. You can’t have one without the other, so the old song goes. By the way, the tall grass is where the “lion, seeking to devour” roams. So keep moving!
2 Peter 1, The Message
Part One
1-2 I, Simon Peter, am a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. I write this to you whose experience with God is as life-changing as ours, all due to our God’s straight dealing and the intervention of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Grace and peace to you many times over as you deepen in your experience with God and Jesus, our Master.
Don’t Put It Off
3-4 Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust.
5-9 So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.
10-11 So, friends, confirm God’s invitation to you, his choice of you. Don’t put it off; do it now. Do this, and you’ll have your life on a firm footing, the streets paved and the way wide open into the eternal kingdom of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Read verses 10 and 11 until you believe it and a grin appears on your face. We are redeemed! His CHOICE is US! Don’t put it off, confirm God’s invitation by following Him and allowing Him to shape us into His best for us. This road leads us right into His Kingdom where, forgive me, all the grass is mowed and trimmed neatly. (Smiling.)Dear Heavenly Father,
I am not where I want or need to be in developing all the characteristics you have given us in this passage. But I am farther down the road than I was yesterday and for that I praise and thank you. You are God. Jesus is my Master, Savior and Lord. Your Holy Spirit helps me. I need you every hour. You are my righteousness. I am not. Continue to transform me.
In Jesus Name, Amen
