2 Peter 1:3: Everything Is in the House

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

2 Peter 1:3 (NIV)

Everything Is in the House

“Now you get to cook for somebody who deserves it,” one of the servers said at his party in April, and Dennis laughed, because it was a kind thing to say and because she meant it. Half the kitchen staff came, and they told him to his face what he had been to them.

He cooked for other people his whole working life, the last long stretch of it in a school kitchen, feeding a building full of children. The groceries have been standing on the counter in their bags since he got home, and he knows exactly what he’s doing with every one of them.

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Peter says God has already given what a godly life takes, and that it comes through knowing the one who called them. He wrote it to people who had received a faith as precious as his own.

Then Peter turns around and tells them to make every effort, adding goodness to faith and knowledge to goodness and self-control to knowledge. He says both, and he says them to the same readers.

Dennis puts the cold things away, which doesn’t take long, and the shelf is full. Everything he needs is in the house, and he has known how to do this since he was twenty. Starting is his to do, at the end of a long day, with his knees the way they are.

His wife gets home at seven, the same as every Thursday. They have eaten at that table thirty-one years, and she’ll eat whatever he puts in front of her and say so.

“Somebody who deserves it,” he says, when he hears the car.