and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
2 Peter 1:11 (NIV)
A Welcome Wide Open
The older of the two women says the number every twelfth row so the other one hears it, twelve and twelve and twelve, because a miscount twenty rows back means taking twenty rows out. The light coming in through the high windows is still the early kind. She was told on Friday that her name isn’t on the list for the next contract, and she’s keeping the count anyway, and hers is the voice the younger one follows.
And you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Peter has asked his brothers and sisters to make every effort to confirm their calling and election. That’s work, and he asks it of people who have plenty on them already, who are tired in the evenings and short with each other. God called them and chose them, and the effort they make confirms it.
A welcome is rich when somebody has gone to trouble over it, and this one is promised to people who spent their lives on a faith that mostly looked like showing up on ordinary mornings when nothing in them wanted to. Peter doesn’t put a size on the effort. He puts the word rich on the welcome, and the welcome is into a kingdom that doesn’t end.
In the weaving room nothing arrives rich. The list comes out on Fridays and it gets shorter every quarter, and the two of them will keep the count going until the piece is off the loom. “Twelve,” the older one says, and the younger one says it back to hold them together, and the shuttle goes across. What does a woman do with a welcome that far off?
A Prayer to Remember
Lord, you called these people and you chose them, and you’ve got a welcome ready at the end of it. There are people this morning with a week in front of them that has nothing rich in it anywhere. Bring the welcome close enough today to be some use to them.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
