A People of Grace

Posted on 25 May 201411 February 2018 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

The NIV’s translation of verse 5 is a little unfortunate. Peter has been talking about elders in the church, and he still is here; the distinction in this first sentence isn’t between younger people and older people, but between those who aren’t elders and those who are. It’s quite clear from the way he continues that he’s addressing the believers as a whole at this point, not just one subset of them. What he has to say is important, because if the temptation of leadership is to dominate and demand, servant leadership creates an equal temptation among those who are being served. It’s easy to mistake humility for weakness and a servant’s heart for a servile spirit, and start to think of a servant leader as “the help.”

I first understood what that means on the occasion of a wedding I did for a couple who came from wealthy families. They appreciated all I did for them, but when the service and reception rolled around, I realized that their families didn’t. They saw me the same way they saw the people bussing the tables: as little more than animate furniture. That sort of attitude is the result of arrogance, and breeds arrogance—the same arrogance we were warned about last week. In that, we can see that these two temptations, that of the leader and that of those who are served, are really one: the temptation to arrogance instead of humility and a spirit of entitlement instead of a spirit of grace. As such, they stand in complete opposition to the life which Christ has given and invited us to live.

Peter brings his letter to a close by telling his readers how to live that life in the face of persecution and suffering. What he says amounts to this: we are to be a people of grace. He lays this out in three ways. At the center of this passage, he calls us to live by grace toward God. “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God,” he says, “and cast all your anxieties on him.” Set aside the pride that says that you can do it on your own, that you’re good enough just the way you are, that you deserve to get what you want, that you deserve better than what you’re getting. Give up the desire to run your life and the insistence on making it all happen yourself—that’s the only way you can cast your anxieties on God; as long as you’re trying to keep control, the anxieties will come with it. To cast your anxieties on him, you must give up control to him.

This is an invitation to entrust ourselves and our lives totally to God, because he cares for us—much better than we do for ourselves, in fact. I love the way theologian Douglas Harink puts it: the Christian life is only possible if

we trust God absolutely in every circumstance. Only such trust will free us from the constant and normal temptations to assert our own power in circumstances, to take down the enemy or oppressor, to seek our own good, to establish our own rights, to attain our own position of honor, or, most basically, simply to defend ourselves and secure our own safety. Without humble trust in “the mighty hand of God,” how would we be able to follow the way of the Messiah, who did not do any of those things, but rather, “entrust[ing] himself to the one who judges justly,” walked the journey from divine glory to the cross?

As Dr. Harink continues, “a mere imitation of Christ carried out by the sheer power of human will” is not the Christian life. You can live an impressively moral life that way (on the outside, at least) and convince a lot of people you’re a godly person, but you won’t be. That’s a life lived apart from God, because it’s a life lived to impress God (and other people). Following Christ begins in truth with the admission that wecan’t actually follow Christ at all. All we can do is lay ourselves at his feet in abject humility and admit our utter inability to do what he commands us to do, and let his Holy Spirit pick us up and carry us. It’s only as we are in Christ by the power of his Spirit, only as we’re completely surrendered to him and our own pride is completely abandoned, in total dependence on his grace, that we can live his life.

The other two points flow out of this reality. One, Peter says in verses 8-9 that we’re to live by grace against sin. It’s easy to miss that because it’s easy to miss that Peter isn’t talking about human opponents here. If you look back at the rest of the letter, he never tells his readers to resist those who persecute them; quite the opposite. Thus, when he says to resist the Devil, he has something very different in mind. This is important. As Dr. Harink points out, when we focus on “apparent flesh-and-blood enemies, we . . . miss the sneak attack of the real adversary—the devil—the one who has already devoured ‘them’ and now seeks to devour ‘us,’ exactly by setting us in warfare against them.” When this happens, “the defeat of the messianic people [is] total, because the very messianic character that defines them [disappears].”

Our enemy is the Devil, not other people, not matter what other people might do to us, and we cannot resist him by our own strength or force of will. We can’t, because he will turn those against us. Our enemy doesn’t only seek to destroy us through our temptations, he seeks to destroy us through our highest goals and most noble motivations, by corrupting and twisting them and by teaching us to use them as excuses for sin. We can only resist him by putting our faith entirely in Christ and resting wholly on his grace. We can only resist the Devil by turning at every point to Jesus, entrusting ourselves as he did to the one who judges justly.

Finally, Peter commands us to live in grace toward one another. Not for us the pride that presumes to look down on others; God opposes the proud. Rather, the more we humble ourselves before God and confess our total dependence on his grace, the more this will determine how we regard and treat one another. There are two aspects to this. First, if the Lord himself didn’t come to be served but to serve, how much more should this be true of us? He calls us to give up our lives in service to each other, not for a little while, not so that they will serve us the way we want to be served, not until they realize we’re too good for that, but in total, with no expectation of any earthly credit or reward. He calls us to give up our agendas and our insistence on having things our way, not as a sneaky strategy for getting our way in the end, but as our sacrifice of worship to him. He invites us to cast our anxieties on him and pour ourselves out in service, holding nothing back, trusting by his grace that all will be well, and all will be good.

Second, if we’re sinners who are utterly dependent on the grace of God for our own salvation—and we are, every one of us—and we’re grateful to God for his mercy when we sin against him, how can we not show that same mercy to those who sin against us? None of us has standing to assume the posture of the judge, looking down on others from a height of moral superiority; measured against the goodness and holiness of God, the greatest height of moral superiority any of us can claim is no more than an anthill. When others sin, it isn’t our place to decide what justice should be done to them, much less to impose it. Rather, our proper place is to come alongside them in humility, on an equal footing with them as fellow sinners saved only by grace, and strive gently and kindly to teach and encourage them to resist the Devil. In this, too, we are to serve regardless of any hope of reward. Jesus commands us to forgive each other until we’ve lost count of how many times we’ve done it, then keep forgiving.

All of this will mean suffering. It will mean suffering from the world, as we set an example that makes our society uncomfortable, and as God allows us to suffer so that he can use it for our growth. It will mean suffering from the Devil, both the pain of conviction for our sin and the pain of resisting temptation. It will even mean suffering from the church, as there will be times that others will take advantage of us. To this, as he has all the way through the letter, Peter encourages us to trust Jesus. Trust him, and after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. This is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it.

Engraving of John Wesley preaching outside a church, from the Wellcome Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

Servant Leaders

Posted on 18 May 201419 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

(Psalm 23; Mark 10:42-45, 1 Peter 5:1-4)

The NIV is missing a key word in verse 1: “Therefore.” It is time for judgment to begin with the house of God, suffering is coming to separate the wheat from the weeds—therefore, Peter says, I appeal to every elder in the church. What he’s going to say would be true and important regardless, but when times are peaceful, the church can survive, and sometimes grow, even under un-Christlike leaders. It may not be all that strong spiritually, but competence in worldly matters can at least keep it muddling along. When suffering and judgment loom on the horizon, that’s no longer the case, and the need becomes critical for those who lead the church to do so as Christ does.

Note how Peter frames his appeal to church leaders. He doesn’t say, “I appeal to you as an apostle,” putting himself above them and asserting his authority. He could have, as he established that in the very first line of the letter, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “I appeal to you as a fellow elder,” putting himself on the same level as them. What matters isn’t positional authority—I have this position or this office, so I have the right to instruct you or to give you orders. What matters is their common position under authority, as servants of Christ and his church. This is important: Peter is modeling for these elders the attitude he wants them to have toward their churches.

He’s calling them to turn away from their culture’s common understanding of leadership, which Jesus summarizes aptly. “Those whom the Gentiles regard as their rulers lord it over them, and their high officials make them feel the weight of their authority.” It was all about positional authority with them: my position gives me the right to get what I want, to have things my way, and to force you to comply. It’s the leadership approach we saw with the President five years ago when he met with Republican leaders to discuss his proposed economic stimulus plan. When they started pushing him to structure it differently, he responded, “I won.” I won, I’m the guy who has the desk with the red phone on it, so I get to do things my way. I don’t have to listen to you if I don’t want to.

Now, this is not to say that just because Republicans disagreed with him, the President should have given in. There will always be disagreement, and leaders have the responsibility to chart the best course they can according to their best judgment, not to try to make everyone happy. You can’t make everyone happy, and if you try, all you’ll manage to do is jam the rudder. The problem is the attitude: I won, you lost, so either go along with me or go fly a kite. There’s no humility in that, no respect for those who disagree, and thus no willingness to learn anything from them. Indeed, there’s no sense that there might be anything to learn from them. The assumption is, “I have the authority, therefore I have the right, therefore I amright.”

Peter tells us that in Christ, we need to lead very differently: we need to lead as shepherds. We tend to collapse the shepherding metaphor into pastoral care—which then often means we only apply it to pastors, and let the rest of the elders of the church off the hook. Peter’s point is much bigger. Shepherds put their lives at the disposal of the sheep. They lead the sheep, but they don’t set the agenda—the sheep do. The sheep are concerned about having good grass, good water, and a safe place to lie down, and they aren’t going to change that for anybody. The shepherd leads the sheep, but that only means his job is to figure out how to get the sheep where they need to be, and then to do what it takes to make that happen. If that means going without sleep to find a missing lamb, he goes without sleep. If it means risking his life to protect them, then so be it.

The shepherd is entirely the servant of his sheep, with no hope that they will accommodate his wishes, or let him get comfortable, or even express proper appreciation for all his sacrifice on their behalf. They’ll certainly complain if they don’t like the grass or the water, but they aren’t going to tell him he’s wonderful when he leads them to good pastures. They won’t make him rich, either, because most of them aren’t his sheep; one or two may be, but the rest belong to someone else, and so too will the profit. He’s just a laborer working for his daily bread.

Peter speaks to us as a fellow elder—as one who knows this work from the inside out. As a fellow elder, he tells those of us who are elders that this is who we are and how we’re called to lead. This is the model for anyone who would lead the people of God, no matter who you are. If it was true for Peter, who had about as much claim to importance as anyone in the history of the church, it’s true for all the rest of us. As Jesus said, the world thinks leaders are people who exercise power to make things happen the way they want them to happen, but those who would lead his people must be a very different kind of leader, with a very different heart and mindset.

If you want to be a leader in the church, you need to be all about serving others—not putting yourself first, but putting yourself last. Leadership means laying down your life for the church. And note this: this is addressed to us to apply to ourselves. As leaders, we have the responsibility to convict ourselves before we presume to criticize others, and to challenge ourselves harder than anyone else.

Thus Peter tells us how and why one ought to be an elder in the church: not out of any sort of compulsion, not for money, not to dominate others or serve our own agenda, but freely, out of a desire to serve and bless the church as a whole. In this, he says, we are to be examples to those whom we lead. I’ve talked about this before: this is the heart of Christian leadership. The essence of the calling is to say to the church with Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, “Follow me as I follow Christ.” This is critically important because of what we’ve seen all the way through 1 Peter: being a Christian doesn’t just mean following a different set of rules from the world, it means we have a whole new identity apart from the world, because we are now in Christ. This isn’t something you can just explain to people; they have to be able to see it lived out if they’re going to understand it. It has to be modeled. It can’t be taught unless it’s also caught.

The church is the body of Christ, alive by the life of Christ, who came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life for us. He calls us to live as a people who do everything we do not to be served but to serve, and to give our lives for others—for enemies and opponents as much as for friends and family. This means that the primary duty of elders is to be examples of the life of Christ, who came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life for us. To lead as servants isn’t a strategy, or a method, or a program, it’s the essence of the work of Christian leadership, because we can only teach others to live this way if we’re living this way ourselves.

The House of God

Posted on 11 May 201419 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

(Proverbs 11:23-31, Malachi 3:1-4; 1 Peter 4:12-19)

Our passage from 1 Peter this morning brings the main body of the letter to a close. The apostle’s primary practical concern as he wrote was to help these believers understand and respond in a Christlike way to the present reality and future prospect of suffering for their faith. As we’ve seen, he approaches this by focusing them on their identity in Christ, for two reasons. One, they need to realize that if they live as committed followers of Christ, suffering is unavoidable. The world will try to force them to change, and punish them if they don’t, for being who they are instead of who the world thinks they ought to be. As the Japanese say, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Two, they need to believe that following Christ is worth the suffering, that the rewards are and will be worth the pain, so that they don’t lose heart and walk away.

Here, as he wraps up all that he’s been saying about suffering, he brings in one more idea which serves to land the whole section. After all, even if you buy in to everything Peter’s had to say to this point, you might well still be thinking it isn’t fair. Sure, no one ever said life is fair, and I believe that Jesus makes it all worth it, but we shouldn’t have to suffer for our faith in him, and why doesn’t God protect us from it? He could, after all—he’s all-powerful and all-knowing, and he could do it if he wanted to.

Many answers have been offered to that question. One that I keep coming back to is the reality that if we were miraculously protected from all suffering, we would quickly lose our ability to relate to, much less to minister to, people in pain. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, “The man who has not suffered—what does he know, anyway?” That’s an approach, one of many, which points to the usefulness of suffering—which means, while I believe it to be true, it is nevertheless an attempt to soften the question a little bit by making it seem like not quite such a bad thing.

Peter is bolder than that; in this passage, he strikes deeper than we ever really want to go. In verse 16 he says, “If you suffer as a Christian, don’t be ashamed, but praise God that you’re known as a Christian.” OK, that’s nothing new for this letter. Then comes verse 17. “For”—which is to say, this is why you should praise God if you suffer as a Christian—“it is time for judgment to begin with the house of God.” In other words—at least, this is what it sounds like—praise God if you’re suffering for his sake, because this is his judgment on you. What on earth do we do with that?

There are three things that need to be said here. First, while Peter doesn’t use the word “family” here, if we think of this in a family context for a minute, we begin to get a handle on it. I discipline my children, but I don’t discipline other people’s children, because it’s not my right to do so. That would make me a meddler or a busybody, which Peter tells us not to be in verse 15. When I discipline my kids, they may perceive it as suffering—Iain certainly does—but it isn’t that I want them to suffer. I want them to turn away from their sin rather than continuing in it; I want them to grow in godliness rather than in sinfulness. It’s better for them to suffer sooner under discipline than to suffer later under judgment, for the latter is far worse, with far greater consequences in the long term. So it is with us under God.

Second, what Peter has in view here is God’s judgment on the whole world, which will come to its fulfillment at the return of Christ. He isn’t talking about God judging you or me as individuals; this is the judgment of God in the big picture, sorting out the world into those who have come to Christ and those who have rejected him. That’s why he says specifically that it’s time for judgment to begin with the houseof God, with God’s temple on earth—which, you may remember, he defined back in chapter 2. God’s spiritual house, the place where he is worshiped on earth, is the church, and we are the living stones out of which he is building it.

Why does this matter? Well, it shifts the picture. Peter isn’t actually saying that if I suffer for my faith, that it’s God’s judgment on me personally—presumably for my sin, which wouldn’t make a great deal of sense in this context. Rather, he’s saying that if suffering comes on the church, that we need to recognize that as the beginning of his judgment on the whole world. His judgment on the world is the separation of the wheat from the weeds, to borrow from one of Jesus’ parables. When the church suffers, that separation is made within the church; those who aren’t truly disciples of Christ, and thus would lead it away from him and bring it under judgment for sin, are weeded out. If you suffer as a Christian—if suffering for your faith doesn’t drive you away, but drives you to Christ—then, Peter says, you should praise God for that.

There has been a long season in this country for the wheat and the weeds to grow up together, but I think we’ve seen that judgment beginning in the American church. A lot has been written about the “rise of the Nones,” as the fastest-growing religious category in the census is those with no religious affiliation; many have taken this as a major change in American society, and either lamented or celebrated it, depending on their point of view. It isn’t really a change at all, though, just a symptom of change. Most of those folks used to describe themselves as affiliated with one church or another because this is America and that’s what you do, even if they only ever went for Christmas, Easter, and weddings. Now, increasingly, that isn’t what you do anymore, and so people who don’t go to church and don’t really care about church have no reason to say otherwise; they aren’t really changing their religious position, just being more honest about it.

Beyond that, whenever Christianity is socially approved, there will be many who will go to church for reasons that have little to do with God—for the sake of their reputation, or their business dealings, or what have you. As traditional Christian faith falls out of favor, that creates a problem for them: they don’t want to lose the connections they’ve made in the church, but they don’t want to be associated with something which is unpopular in their social circles. Their usual response is to try to drag the church along with the culture, and thus we see many in the American church changing historic Christian teaching to conform to what elite society tells us all the right-thinking people believe.

That’s been going on for a long time in the Protestant mainline, such as our former denomination, but it isn’t just there; we also see it happening now among many who would call themselves evangelicals. The church is being divided out. If we refuse to go with the flow, if we stand for Christ against the desires of the world, we need to realize that we’re in for trouble for it, and we need to accept that in advance.

Third, if we do, it matters. It matters tremendously, because this is about the cleansing of the temple. The house of God is the place on earth where God is worshipped; it’s the access point for all those in the world whom he draws to seek him. He made many promises through the Old Testament prophets that the time would come when all nations would come to Zion, to the mountain of God, to his temple and his city, to worship him and to bow before him; the church is the spiritual Zion and the inheritor of those promises.

One that we should especially remember is God’s statement in Isaiah 56, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.” I say we should remember it because of something Jesus did—twice—which I’m sure Peter never forgot. The high priest set up a religious marketplace in the Court of the Gentiles; it probably made him a lot of money, but it also made it impossible for Gentiles to worship in the Temple. They probably couldn’t even hear what was going on in the inner courts over the sounds of animals and money and business deals. When Jesus saw this, he flipped over the tables and drove out animals and moneychangers alike, denouncing the whole thing in the words of Isaiah 56: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves!”

The worship of God had to be pure because those whom God was calling needed to be able to answer that call. It wasn’t, so Jesus purified it by driving out those who weren’t in that courtyard to worship. God’s judgment on the church is the separation of those who are focused on worshipping him, who are learning to love to worship him, from those who, in the last analysis, are really worshipping something else. It’s God renewing his church as a people who worship him in spirit and in truth, and whose worship is pure—as pure as we ever manage, anyway—so that those who come are led and taught to turn away from the idols of our culture and worship him alone.

Faithful Stewards

Posted on 4 May 201419 October 2015 by Rob Harrison | No Comments

(Proverbs 10:8-12; Luke 19:11-27, 1 Peter 4:7-11)

We seem to have finally shaken ourselves free of the grey skies and cold winds of winter; but even if the sun is finally shining, there is heavy weather ahead. When the news came down that Zimmer had bought Biomet, the horizon turned black and ominous for a lot of people in our community. A lot of them are afraid of being laid off, and a lot more are talking about leaving. It’s the end of an era, and it could take far more than just the era with it. A storm is coming, and the skies are dark.

It isn’t just here, though; look to the world’s horizon. If Iran wants to develop weapons of mass destruction, we can’t really stop them, and we don’t know how close they might be—and the government of Iran is the geopolitical equivalent of a homicidal sociopath. North Korea already has nuclear weapons, and I’m not even sure what you’d compare them to; that may be the most fundamentally deranged government and political culture in human history. The skies are dark; a storm is coming.

And our nation? “We are not now that strength which in old days / Moved earth and heaven”; and unlike Tennyson’s Ulysses, we cannot claim to be “One equal temper of heroic hearts / . . . strong in will / To strive, to see, to find, and not to yield.” Our culture is collapsing back into a class system; the real divide isn’t between Democrat and Republican anymore, but between the elites and the plebes, and they’re beginning to separate like bad veneer coming off cheap particle board. That separation is sapping the life from our political system. Increasingly, our elites are too focused on playing their own power games and enabling their own self-interest—particularly with regard to sexual politics—to take the problems of the world around them seriously on their own terms, rather than as opportunities for political gain. And sacrificial leadership? Forget it. The skies are dark, the wind is rising, and the captain is down in the hospitality suite.

Now, perhaps you think I’m being far too grim, and painting far too black a picture. I believe there’s an end looming—not the end of the world, but at least the end of the world as we know it—and maybe you don’t see that. But even so, squint a little, and listen closely, because this is the horizon that frames both Peter’s instructions and Jesus’ parable. Peter’s audience could see it: unofficial persecution was rising, and Nero was unstable. Those who stood around Jesus couldn’t; but forty years later, Jerusalem would burn, and the Temple would be dismantled down to the last stone. Whether they realized it or not, the end of the world as they had known it was around the corner.

In truth, it always is, even in the best of times. We cannot control the future, and we can never be sure what’s going to hit us next. I don’t expect any of us to be dead by tomorrow, but any of us could be. One moment’s distraction, at just the wrong time, and you could be hit by a bus, or a train, or lose control of your car. Or something weirder could happen. Our oldest and most beloved member in Grand Lake was walking to church one morning when an enraged bull moose charged down the alley behind our house and killed him. Between one moment and the next, everything can change forever.

Therefore, says Peter, be faithful stewards of all the diverse forms of God’s grace, to the purpose that God would be glorified through Jesus Christ. There are a few things to say about this. First, “speaking” and “serving” means all our words and all our actions, everything we do in every part of life. Paul says much the same in Colossians 3: “Whatever you do, whether in word or in deed, do it all in the name of Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Peter elaborates: if God has given you breath to speak, he has given you breath to speak his truth, every time you open your mouth. If he has given you strength to act, he has given you strength to use to serve others.

Second, everything we have is God’s gift to us by his grace; there’s nothing that’s purely ours to use for our own purposes. Your riches, your brilliant mind, your gentle personality, your great athletic ability, none of these are truly your possession. All of them are gifts from God, given to the church in your person to be used for his work. And for those of us who have none of the above, well, we bear other gifts from God to the church. Nor is our time our own. God gives us every moment, and he measures out the length of our days on this earth; we have only the time he gives us, and he gives it to us to serve him, including by serving one another, not to serve ourselves. None of us can say “my time,” “my money,” or “my life” as the one who owns any of those things. We’ve been loaned them for a little while; in the end, we’ll be judged for how we’ve used them.

Third, it’s even truer to say that none of us can say “my church” as the one who owns it; none of us have the right to say, “This is my church, so it should be what I want it to be.” We are God’s church; he owns us, and this is where he owns us. On earth, this is my church and your church because we belong to it, not because it belongs to us. God calls us to the church in much the same way Jesus came into this world, not to be served but to serve, and to give our lives for the sake of the many. This isn’t the church where any of us is allowed to insist on what we want or demand our own way; this is the church where each of us is called in the love of God to give up what we want and sacrifice our own way so that our brothers and sisters in Christ will grow in his love and his grace, and so that those who are estranged from him will come to know and love him as we should.

Fourth, as individuals and as a church, good stewardship doesn’t mean making sure we have enough in the bank to give us financial security. It doesn’t mean using God’s gifts for our own benefit, or for our own support. The goal of our stewardship of all our possessions and talents and time is not worldly success, or a comfortable retirement, or even to keep the lights on and the doors open. When God comes to ask us if we’ve been faithful in our use of everything he’s given us, there will only be one criterion: did we use it all to the best of our ability to serve and glorify him?

In our parable from Luke, a nobleman goes off to the imperial capital to receive a kingship, but some of his subjects send a delegation after him to oppose him. If he gets his way, he’ll come back with even greater power. If they get theirs, he’ll be exiled and replaced. While he’s gone, his servants are in a somewhat precarious position—he’s gone, but most of his enemies are still around, and when the cat’s away, the mice will play. He leaves each of them with money and a choice: will they stake everything on his victorious return—because obeying their master’s command will earn them the hatred of those who hate him—or will they act as if he isn’t coming back? When he returns, he judges them not on their financial acumen, but on their faithfulness: did they continue to represent him and do his business while he was away, or not?

And what is the king’s business? To what should we give the time we have left as the end draws nearer? “Above all,” Peter says, “love each other deeply.” When Jesus returned to the Father, he gave us the gift of his love, making us free to love each other humbly and sacrificially; but if we don’t make the decision to do so, then hatred will creep in, through its various guises—dislike, mistrust, bitterness—and sow conflict, gossip, backbiting, and undermining of leadership. Love, however, buries those plants whenever they begin to grow, before they can bear fruit. It breaks the cycle of sin in the community. As the British pastor N. J. D. White put it,

a man who puts himself under the control of the love God acts, when a private personal injury has been done to him, as though nothing had occurred. In this way, by simply ignoring the unkind act or the insulting word, . . . he brings the evil thing to an end; it dies and leaves no seed. . . . This consideration gives dignity and worth inestimable to the feeble efforts of the most insignificant of us to make love the controlling principle in our daily lives.

However feeble our efforts may seem to us at times, that we make them sincerely is what matters to our Lord; he asks us not, “Have you been successful?” but “Have you been faithful?” When he comes, may he find us faithful to the end.