Daily Devotional • November 25
A Reading from 1 Peter:13-25
13 Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. 14 Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. 15 Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; 16 for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’
17 If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. 18 You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. 20 He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake.21 Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.
22 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. 23 You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For
‘All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
25 but the word of the Lord endures for ever.’
That word is the good news that was announced to you.
Meditation
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? In other words, which is the cause, and which followed as the effect? This causality dilemma may similarly be applied to action and desire when it comes to the good. Do good actions follow from a desire to be good, or does the desire for the good flow from good actions?
In children, desire—regardless if it is for good or ill—reigns supreme. I desire a second cookie and all my actions—screaming, throwing things, threatening to run away from home—are all a direct effect of that desire being unfulfilled. Conversely, if a child doesn’t desire to do something good—like share a toy—she will refuse to do it. All action or inaction flows from the desire. In the process of growing up and becoming more disciplined and obedient, we learn to not, as St. Peter says, “become conformed to the desires” that we had when we did not know better, but to “be holy [ourselves] in all [our] conduct.” Notice St. Peter does not say we should desire to be holy in order to be holy in our conduct. He prioritizes taking action first, persisting in good, perhaps in the face of desires that we know to be wrong.
Rather than living in our own heads, trying to sort out our wills until they are perfect, St. Peter tells us to prepare our minds for action. Perfect desire cannot come first. The rich man in today’s Gospel believed he was ready for action because he had perfected his desire. Jesus tells the man, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” The man with his supposed perfect desire went away grieving.
We must prepare our minds for holy action, even if our desires are still selfish and childish. If we wait for the perfect desire to come first, we will find we are unable to do what needs to be done and be left grieving.
Sarah Cornwell lives in Wheaton, IL with her husband, James, and their seven children.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania
The Diocese of Rochester (England) – The Church of England
This ministry of The Living Church Foundation is made possible in part by a special bequest from the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer.
