A Community of Hope
For Meditation
Peter’s vision of the Christian life is not individual Christians struggling through the world as solitary exiles. His vision, as beautifully captured in 1 Peter 1:22-2:10, is of an exilic community living out the gospel together. Peter uses numerous rich images of family, nationhood, and a building of living stones to describe what this new community is like. His vision calls us to re-order our lives away from individualism and toward shared life and practices. The ultimate purpose of this community, Peter says, is to “declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his wonderful light” (2:9). The church is called not to build attractive programs and services, but to become an attractive community, one that displays God’s grace and goodness to the world.
Worship Guides for Sunday's Services can be viewed by clicking the service names, below:
9:00 AM Convergent Service in the Sanctuary
11:15 AM Traditional Service in the Sanctuary
11:15 Contemporary Service in the Fellowship Hall
For Reflection
1 Peter 1:22-2:10
22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For, “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, 25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.” And this is the word that was preached to you.
1 Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. 4 As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For in Scripture it says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” 7 Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” 8 and, “A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for. 9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
