A Living Hope – 1 Peter 1:1-2:12
You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood.
The “Church” is not a building made of brick and mortar. It’s not a place that you go once a week. It’s not a steeple… or a pretty chapel… or even a worship service.
Instead, we understand that the Church is the Body of Christ “spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners.” (Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis)
Take great assurance in the knowledge that you stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Christ-followers around the world… and that you stand in a long line of disciples stretching all the way back in time to those who walked with Jesus on this earth.
Indeed, we are strangers and aliens on this land, a peculiar people (a purchased possession!), who belong to God. We are the Church. Our lives are living stones built into a house of worship. Our words a living testament to God’s transforming grace. Our lives are to be lived to God’s greater glory, and we are the priests who offer the ministry of reconciliation to brothers and sisters who are far from God.
Where his church may bow before him, hear his Word and sing his worth!
Not alone our bricks and mortar, hearts and lives to God we raise:
He will set his name forever on such building to his praise.
– Margaret Clarkson