Thoughts for the Day

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. For:

'All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord endures for ever.'

That word is the good news that was announced to you.

(Church in Wales Lectionary, New Revised Standard Version)

Thoughts

The First Letter of Peter is addressed to persecuted Christians living in a number of areas in Asia Minor. It was one of the last books to be included in the New Testament, and there is some disagreement by experts over who wrote it, because of its fluent Greek style. Would a Galilean fisherman write in this way? But having said that, it has some important things to say. The writer exhorts his readers to remember that Jesus also suffered, but then rose from the dead in glory. He argues that they are to repay evil with goodness.

This passage is often read at funerals, and when reading it you to have work towards the last line. It starts very downbeat - we are like wild flowers in a meadow perhaps, but the flowers will die and the grass will be cut back and then destroyed. How depressing! However, the last two lines remind us that 'the word of the Lord endures for ever'!

We may only be on the earth for a very short time, but whatever trials we have to endure we should remember that God is eternal, and He offers us a future.

Heavenly Father,
when life is hard
when we don't know where to turn,
and we cannot see the way ahead,
help us to remember
that You are eternal,
that You care for us,
and that You offer
us a future.
Amen.