Sorry for the late send - A few more comments on 1 Peter 1:22 - 25
Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. Your have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. For
"All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flowers of grass.
The grass withers, and the flower falls,
but the world of the Lord endures forever."
That word is the good news that was announced to you.
The victory of God is announced through us. Our whole, healing being is a witness to the new age - the new being. I would submit that this victory is - as was said in other places - the love of God that become flesh and blood among us and as us. Here we must focus on the witness and the promise of what the witness brings. We are given life that is imperishable. The promises of our God do not end and the life that those promises never ends. Again and again, the promise will be revealed and come alive even as we are living in the mess and violence of the world. Whenever there is a life witness to the love of God in a world that so easily wraps itself up in violence and retribution and revenge, we will stand out as something odd - alien. That alien life is what comes when we trust in the victory of God over all the powers of evil. For as aliens, we are not constrained by the status quo of powers that do not rule us.
Connection: We do not need a government to 'secure' our values or the life we intend to live as followers of Jesus. We live according to the love of God that we see in Jesus. That is a love that persists even if it is not the practice of the world. In the middle of a world and a society and a culture that rejects the way we live within he victory of God we don't moan and groan and grip - we go on living because we do not need the support of any power of the day. That is once again why the writer of 1 Peter refers to aliens. Yes, we participate in all things, but we will also live differently and count on no power to rescue us or carry the banner of the Christ.
In the middle of what is so common, O God, we await you Reigning power among us. Amen.
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