Cloister thoughts...

We all know what it is like to receive a letter in the mail. And quickly we can scan the letters and make a judgment - junk mail, solicitation, bills and ahhh - a personal letter. Then the heart beats a little faster – is this good news – bad news. We rip it open and quickly in the first few sentences we can tell – if this is a letter to build us up or to tear us down.

I often hear people say they have a keepsake drawer, or a special box where they save all the “good, affirming” letters that they received…so when they are having a bad day – or they are feeling all lone…they can take out one and read it – to be restored to a place of hope – a moment of grace.

First Peter is an early letter to leaders of churches in Asia Minor, probably not actually written by Peter but certainly claiming his authority as an apostle and leader of the church. The letter is a pastoral letter – it is written from the heart of a pastor and the caregiving for the church. The letter emphasizes Christian unity and seeks to encourage those who are facing persecution by Rome and the surrounding pagan culture.'

The shot in the arm the letter offers is a reminder that they are not only individuals but they are God’s people…they may feel personal struggles but God has called them forth to be “a holy nation, God’s own people.” (1 Peter 1:9) Immediately, the tape in my mind turns on – and I hear the recording once again – of those adolescent years when I would head out the door and my mom would say, “remember who you are.”

Think of it! The hodgepodge of misfits that made up the early church – some converted Jews, some Gentiles, some pagans, some renegades – are now God’s people, the church. We are no different today. Some preparatory Christians, some prodigal sons, some saints, and some renegades, we are God’s people. We are widows and widowers, single people and married people, children; we are doctors, lawyers, and administrative assistances and painters. We are God’s people. Chosen out of our uniqueness to work together to be a holy nation.

We have no more claim to be God’s chosen people than did those in the first-century church. We are blemished with our sins…we have all made mistakes, said and done the wrong thing. If the kingdom of God were open only to those who deserved it, we would all be in trouble. The author of First Peter helps us visualize how we individually are becoming the house for God. “Like living stones,” he writes, “let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.” (1 Peter 2:5)

We are individuals joined together in community to make a difference in the world. Saints and renegades together, and most of us somewhere in between, we work together to be living stones built as a dwelling place for God in our midst.

The main character in Hannah Hunnard’s book, Hinds' Feet on High Places, is seeking to walk with God, and yet she is surprised that the path is rough and rocky. Time after time she stumbles and falls, all the time wishing that she could run like a mountain deer, with “hinds feet on high places.” Her angelic companions tell her, though, to pick up stones from the places that are roughest, and to keep them with her, together in a small bag.

I like that image, picking up stones to remember the hard spots in our lives after we have gotten beyond them. What she does at the end of the journey, though, is build an altar out of those very same stones, out of the broken pieces of her heart.

Beloved friends, as we journey these rough and hard days during this Pandemic, imagine picking up a stone for all the challenges you have faced, prepared to build an altar of thanksgiving for the strength emerging from your spiritual house of faith. We become the living stones, a holy priesthood ministering out of our community to the whole people of God.