Monday, 11 April, 2005

Our devotions for the first few days of this week will come from the second chapter of 1 Peter, which rather conveniently overlaps with the second lessons for the next two Sundays. Hurray for a theme, right?

1 Peter 2:2-3
"Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation-if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good."

The shoes were enormous. I must have been in third or fourth grade when my father bought me a pair of tennis shoes that was at least three sizes bigger than the ones I wore at the time. At first I thought he'd forgotten my size-or gotten me confused with a young Goliath-but he told me that he got them so big intentionally. They were for when my feet got bigger with age and I grew into them. All I could do was to grow into them by drinking enough milk (that's the standard parental prescription for developing children, right?) and by just being the boy I was. And in the mean time, there those tennis shoes would sit, a sort of signpost toward the future, a rubber-soled promise of who I would become. But while I waited, I didn't have to do anything to make those shoes my possession-they were already mine. All I could do was to grow into them.

I can't help but picture the same shoes when I read that line from 1 Peter about "growing into salvation." It's not that salvation is some fixed material reward handed to us in a cardboard box at the pearly gates on some distant day. No, just the opposite-God gives it to us even now, even before we have grown into it. Paul would put it to the Romans by saying that God's love came to us in Christ "while we were still weak." But the idea is the same here-salvation is given to us in the present, plain and simple, and all we can do is to grow into that gift, the gift we have already received. We use words like "salvation," "hope," and "redemption," as signposts pointing toward God's future, a future God is drawing us and all this hurting creation into. We use those words as shorthand for the promise that God has loved us now, even in our infant-like weakness, even in our childish self-centeredness, and that God will not rest until that love has had its way with us, taken root in us, and come to fruition. In the mean time, all we can do is to grow into that love.

Connection: Salvation is already ours as a gift from God. And because of that, in this day, we no longer need to stew over whether we're "in" or not in God's book. Instead, we can look hopefully to how we will be changed in this day and how the love of our God will take hold of us in surprising new ways.

Gracious God, let us drink you in deep and taste that you are good. Give us the freedom to trust that you are leading us and making us to grow into who we are-your very children. Amen.