Grains of Sand

Pixabay It's not the milk's fault! I don't know when it happened but somewhere along the line the "perfect food" became imperfect. Milk used to be considered that "perfect food". I remember one choir tour that took us to a farming community in Eastern Ontario. The ladies of the congregation prepared and served lunch for us in the church basement after the morning service. It was a full meal, a banquet in fact. Part of any meal is a beverage, and milk was one of the items offered that day. I took the milk and I seriously doubt that what I drank was ever touched by anyone but the farmer from whose cows it came. It was the real deal. It was sooooo good! What appears in our stores today is not that. And while what we drink might be so altered as to no longer be "perfect" perhaps the problem is not the milk so much as it is the drinker. We are an altered people, contaminated by the world we have contaminated—tit for tat. But thi...

Pixabay The recent political brouhaha here in Canada swirling around honesty, integrity, hypocrisy among the leaders of the major party leaders highlights the importance of Peter's instructions to the pilgrims of his day. He writes: " Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander of every kind ". (1 Peter 2:1) Whenever we see a " therefore " in Scripture we know that something was said earlier that is important. The previous section of Peter's letter had to do with being holy as God is holy. This call to holiness is based on what Christ did in giving His life to provide salvation for these pilgrims, these exiles now scattered throughout the Roman world. They were to love one another deeply as Christ had loved them. And love, being more than "a warm fuzzy" has characteristics. Peter is about to describe what those are. If these pilgrims, and by extension, if we, want to live out our journey in k...

Pixabay " Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For 'all people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever.' And this is the word that was preached to you. " When I posted my thoughts on 1 Peter 1:17-19, someone commented that love without justice and righteousness was just an empty word. That observation fits so well into these verses from 1 Peter 1:22-25. The pilgrimage that produces springs in the desert, that gives life where there is no evidence of it, as is suggested in Psalm 84, cannot be simply a "warm fuzzy". Here, in Peter's words as recorded in 1 Peter 1:22-25, we read his challenge to these pilgrims,...

Pixabay As is always true, there so many diamonds to dig out of every passage of Scripture. A lifetime is not enough to find them all and expose every one of their glorious facets. We look briefly at a couple from 1 Peter 1:17-19 as we consider our pilgrimage or journey through this death valley of life and we look toward home.  Earlier this morning I was reading through the book of Amos. It's a book of judgment sprinkled with a little hope. But two words stuck out: justice and righteousness. The absence, or perversion, of these two in the lives of God's people, Israel, brought judgment down on their heads. God's judgment fell equally both on the enemies of His people as well as on His people. He will not be mocked by either. Peter alludes to that as he writes: " Since you call on a Father who judges each other's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or...

Pixabay To understand what the divine design is for the pilgrimage that God has set before all believers we need to go back briefly to the very beginning of Peter's letter. We need to look at what we are called to be. He writes, in part: " To God's elect, strangers in the world, scattered…who have been chosen…for obedience to Jesus Christ…"  There is a lot to unpack in Peter's introduction but we want to look at this last phrase: Obedience to Jesus Christ.  Mark it down because what follows in the letter describes what that obedience looks like, beginning with 1 Peter 1:13-16. That love, that faith, that joy that Peter commends his readers for, that he urges them to continue in despite the circumstances, exhibits itself as these pilgrims travel along the journey of life like this: " Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children...

Pixabay What is it that makes it possible to turn a valley of sorrow into a mountaintop of joy? Psalm 84:11 describes the believer’s journey toward the heavenly Zion as “ the valley of Baca ” or the valley of weeping.  "Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength till each appears before God in Zion ." “Baca” or ”Bakah” refers to a tree that weeps resin, likely a Balsam or Mulberry tree. In the psalmist’s day pilgrims would pass through what is now considered to be the actual Valley of Baca, on their way to worship in Jerusalem. It was waterless, dry, barren. The psalmist uses the picture of this valley as representative of the journey of life which so often includes sorrow, suffering, and barrenness. But he insists that the pilgrim can turn that dark and difficult valle...

Pixabay Our goal: Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go on from strength to strength till each appears before God in Zion. —Psalm 84:5-7 Pilgrims, on their journey to the capitol city of the Kingdom of God, are not promised a trouble-free trip. The believers to whom Peter wrote his first letter were experiencing persecution because they were followers of Jesus. They were scattered throughout the world of their day with little hope of finding peace and safety anywhere since Rome had her tentacles in every part of that world. Several years ago I read  We've Lost. What Now? ,  a book based on lessons from Daniel. In it, author Wayne Baxter describes how Daniel's experience relates to today's church as it hovers on the edges of society, in a world over which, as Francis Schaeffer said in...