So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.
2 Peter 3:14 (NIV)
Found at Peace With Him
A vital records office handles both ends of a life. Birth certificates and death certificates come off the same printer, on the same stock, under the same raised seal. A laminated sheet by the door lists what counts as proof that you are who you say you are. Nothing in the building moves fast. A woman in the third chair has a folder open on her knees with two forms in it, one for her father and one for her daughter, and she keeps turning them over to hold them in the order she wants.
Peter writes to people who are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells, and he gives them work to do while they look. Make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.
To be found. God comes and looks, and Peter wants him to find these people clean and at peace with him, with nothing left standing between them. So he tells them to make every effort. There’s work for the hands while the eyes are somewhere else.
Effort is something you can start on a Wednesday morning. It looks like coming back to God after failing at the same thing for the fourth time, and like telling him the true version of an afternoon instead of the version that lets you off. Peter asks for effort in the direction of spotless and blameless. All of it aims at peace with him.
You can be in the right and still be at odds with God about it. Peter wants these people found with that settled.
The clerk presses the seal into the second page and slides it across. The woman reads the name on it, then reads the other one, and puts them back in the folder the way she had them. There’s a line for the hour and a line for the place, and nothing anywhere on either one about what the day was like.
A Prayer to Remember
Nothing on today’s list has anything to do with you, Lord, and I wrote the list myself. I want to be right with you more than I want the day to go smoothly, most days. Show me one thing I can put right with you today, and give me the hour to do it in.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
