Megaphone

1 Peter 2:9 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.

Here is a simple question. What is our purpose? Why are we here on earth? What reason do we have to get up in the morning? This question, phrased different ways, has been the one question people down through the millennia with so many unsatisfying answers.

Money, power, success, legacy, influence, ‘making a difference’ (never specified toward the good or toward the bad), family, ceramic figurines, antique cars… the list could go on and on. NONE of these things provide a satisfying answer to the longing of our heart for meaning in this life. They all fall short because they are all only temporary. They are all temporal, secular goals.

But there is something that can satisfy this deep longing to do something eternal. Peter gives us the answer in our text. He begins by stating very plainly who we really are as followers of Jesus. We are already at the top of the pile.

We are a chosen people. We serve a specific role within a set-apart community of people. We are identified as His. We have already achieved everything that can bring satisfaction to humans, true satisfaction. We now inhabit a new place in God’s creation.

So now that we recognize our new place in creation, what are we supposed to be doing? Peter tells us we are to be declaring the praises of God. Some might hear in this verse that we stand around and sing hymns, but that would be too small a mission.

We are to declare with everything that is within us. We declare with our family life and the example of godliness lived out in the sacred space of family. We declare it in our interactions with others by the way we love one another. We declare it with our creativity reflecting the creative God whom we serve.

We declare it by proclaiming the message of hope that is held out in the Gospel. We are always ready to give an answer to anyone who asks us about the hope we have. We articulate lovingly, gently and truthfully the fullness of the Gospel. We are sinners in need of reconciliation. And what a needed message today in our fractured world.

We are called out of the darkness and into His light. Let us live today with this as our reality, since it is our reality.