Thy Word

Though he had denied him, at Pentecost the same Peter stood before thousands, his voice ringing with the quiet authority of one who had seen the Risen Lord.

Christ’s sacrificial death was in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies given thousands of years earlier, a truth that should anchor us in the faith that the Word of God can be trusted today and to the end of time.

Our term today – ‘in vain’ – is existential, questioning whether our hope and faith is hollow or has any object beyond ourselves and this life.

We are not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the only power that brings salvation to everyone who believes!

We hold fast to what we’ve been taught, not out of rigid tradition, but out of love for the Truth that anchors us in this troubled world.

Today, God challenges us not to let the Gospel sit like an unopened letter on the table or email in our inbox. May we acknowledge it and let the “received” word move us from casual listeners to a committed followers and disciples.

Repetition is never redundancy in the kingdom of God. It is grace. Without reminders, we forget and drift. That’s why we should never grow weary of hearing again what think we already know.

In the natural world, no one chooses his/her siblings. This is a radical call to embrace each other as family, rather than treating the church like a club where the imperfect, the struggling, the different are not welcome.

Today, Jesus gives us a good example of what ‘purpose’ is. It is not a destination you reach. It is the quiet, unrelenting force that turns every step into a journey worth taking, because if you don’t no one will.

“I must proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why