God puts our very lives on a firm footing
September 29th, 2024 – Communion Meditation
With the downpours and deluges we’ve had this week, I’ve had to be extra careful about where I placed my feet. An ordinary stroll across a parking lot turned into a search for a path between the swirling puddles that suddenly arose. Slipping and sliding up to my mailbox made me realize I’d better find a steadier way back down the hill. There is a beautiful passage in a letter from the apostle Peter to the early church in which he speaks to how God puts our very lives on a firm footing.
2 Peter 1:2-11 (The Message) – “2 Grace and peace to you many times over as you deepen in your experience with God and Jesus, our Master. 3 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! 4 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 So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, 6 alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, 7 warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. 8 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. 9 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 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, 11 the streets paved and the way wide open into the eternal kingdom of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
As we come to the Communion table together today, we are doing just what the apostle Peter said: confirming God’s invitation to us, his choice of us. In the same way that we hold the bread and the cup, we hold our basic faith and present ourselves afresh to our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ. As we eat the bread and drink the cup, we participate in the very life of God! And all through each day and each week, as we work hand-in-hand with Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, God’s promises are fulfilled in and through us. We build on what we’ve been given, developing good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love. With these qualities active and growing in us, God puts our very lives on a firm footing.
On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and said, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (Eat together)
Again, Jesus took the cup and said, “This is my blood of the new covenant poured out for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (Drink together)
