Day 308: Love Covers Whose Sins?

1 Peter 4; Jeremiah 37-38; Psalm 137

I like this chapter in Peter! It talks about suffering for Christ. How suffering shows that we have stopped sinning. It shows that we have turned from our evil ways. It shows that God is preparing us for happiness when Christ returns. It shows that the Holy Spirit is with us. It shows that we belong to God. It's an opportunity to honor God and make Jesus proud. That is not typically how we look at suffering. Trials in life elicit groans, whines, frustrations, and while those are natural, what if we looked at suffering a lot differently? Like Peter describes it?

One thing that he points out is that our former friends wonder why we stopped running around with them and they curse us for it. This implies a couple of things. First, that when Christ comes into your life, it changes you. Secondly, it changes who we want to be around. It changes what we want to spend our time doing. And it brings troubles from "outside." When I hear someone bashing Christians, it makes me want to live that much more awesomely, just to show them that while we aren't perfect, God has done an amazing thing in us.

The last thing that this chapter reveals to me is that "you must sincerely love each other, because love wipes away many sins." I always thought that this was talking about how love helps to remove the sins of others. And maybe that is what it really means. But this morning, it seems like something a little different. Love doesn't just wipe away others' sins, this scripture seems to be talking about our own. When we love one another sincerely, there isn't room for slander, gossip, selfishness, pride--our own sins don't have room to show up because love, deep and unconditional love, is so powerful.

Zedekiah seems to go back and forth; he's a little wishy washy. Jeremiah shares his message and people get angry, ignore him, throw him in prison. Zedekiah wants to know more from God, and when Jeremiah tells him, he is terrified, but lets Jeremiah live in a nicer prison and be fed. Then when the people get mad at Jeremiah, Zedekiah acts like he doesn't care, but later he orders them to rescue Jeremiah from the bottom of the well. Then in secret, he send for Jeremiah again and wants to hear what God has said, but is terrified when Jeremiah actually tells him. He warns him that he should tell no one of their meeting. He is back and forth in his concern for God's message and to me, that sets him up for failure.

Psalm 137 talks about how hard it is to sing about their homeland when they are somewhere else. It is sometimes true for us. It's hard to sing about heaven when we are facing hardships here on Earth. But that doesn't mean that we should quit trying, quit pursuing heaven, quit longing for that paradise. We just need to recognize it is going to be tough.