Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.
2 Peter 3:11-12 (NIV)
What Kind of People
Three people who would never have chosen each other are out in the courtyard by eight most evenings. It’s got room for four cars, a dumpster enclosure, a picnic table nobody bought, and a hose bib that leaks. The man from the first floor comes down to smoke where his wife can’t smell it. The woman from the third floor walks a dog that doesn’t want to walk. The teenager is up on the table with earbuds in, because the apartment is small and the table is not the apartment.
Fire takes the heavens, the elements melt in the heat, and everything done on the earth is laid bare. Peter softens none of that, and he asks about character anyway. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, he says, what kind of people ought you to be. He answers himself: holy and godly lives, lived while you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.
It’s a relief, and I’m not going to apologize for saying so. A date I can do nothing about would leave me standing around waiting; what kind of people is something I can start on before it gets dark tonight.
Take the rest of it at face value. Peter tells people who can’t set the date that they can hurry it along, and the hurrying gets done by living holy and godly lives while they watch for it. So how you keep an evening, and how you speak to a neighbor you never picked, has to do with the arrival of the day of God.
Out in the courtyard the dog has decided to lie down and the woman is waiting her out. The man puts his cigarette against the underside of the table, where there’s a small constellation of old marks he made himself. The teenager takes one earbud out. Three people who never picked this square of concrete give it another minute, and then another.
A Prayer to Remember
A day for the end of this world came from you, and you are bringing it. Let me hear that as news about me. Make me the kind of person who could be set down in that day without flinching. And when I get impatient for it, turn the impatience into work a neighbor could use.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
