1 Peter 4-5 CSB
The end of all things is near; therefore, be alert and sober-minded for prayer. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, since love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining. Just as each one has received a gift, use it to serve others, as good stewards of the varied grace of God. If anyone speaks, let it be as one who speaks God’s words; if anyone serves, let it be from the strength God provides, so that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ in everything. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen. (4:7-11)
Peter writes to a people who were dispossessed, persecuted and suffering. He lets them know that these things are happening because they are living in the last days. If those were the last days then, how much closer to the end must we be today? Yet with the end looming and times being exceptionally tough, Peter does not advise them to circle the wagons. Instead, he tells them to be alert, to pray and to treat others well. That is an amazing statement to me. Typically when times are the hardest we feel like we have permission to look out for number one, but God never gives us that permission.
Instead, we are to do things like “be hospitable without complaining.” We are told to use our gifts to “serve others” and to keep looking for ways to love people no matter how hard that is. We are to weigh every word carefully and speak as if we are speaking the “very oracles of God.” We are to serve, but not in our strength; no we are to serve with the strength that God provides. Why do we do what is impossible to do? Why do we keep loving when no one loves us? Why do we serve and pray and lean entirely on God? We do it so that “God may be glorified through Jesus Christ in everything.” Your light should shine the brightest when the hour is the darkest. You should bloom and thrive no matter how much the thorny world seeks to entangle you. You should pray, love others and lean into Him no matter how much it looks like things are falling apart around you. When we cling to Him, and when we do what is right no matter what it costs us, that is when God moves for His glory and that is when the world understands what it really means to be a child of God. No matter how bleak things might seem today… never, ever lose hope. His is the power and the glory forever and ever.
