Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.
Hebrews 12:14 (NIV)
Work at Peace With Everyone
The terrace on the east side of the hospital falls into shade, so the smokers end up out there. A man in work boots has the end of the bench and he’s careful about where he sends the smoke, and he hasn’t looked up since he came out. There’s a woman at the other end in scrubs with her badge turned around, and a boy of about fifteen up on the low wall with his phone face down beside him. None of the three wants company or wants to be inside, so they’ve worked it out without a word: the smoke goes downwind, the bench keeps a gap in the middle, and when the door opens all three shift an inch.
“Without holiness no one will see the Lord.” The writer of Hebrews says that in the same sentence where he asks for two efforts at once, peace with everyone and holiness. God disciplines the people he’s training so that they may share in his holiness, and he asks them to work at it with everything they have. All of it is aimed at seeing him.
Peace with everyone runs from an inch on a bench out to the person the man in work boots has stopped speaking to, and God asks for every effort across the whole of that. The inch comes easy and costs nothing. The far end of it would cost him an afternoon and most of his pride, and it’s one command from one end to the other.
The woman in scrubs goes back in to the worst week of a family she barely knows, and the boy on the wall is waiting on news about his own, and neither of them worked at the hour they just had out there. It came free, downwind, with a gap left in the middle of a bench. God asks for a great deal more than that, and he says what hangs on it: without holiness no one will see the Lord. What is it going to be like to see him?
A Prayer to Remember
God, you discipline people so that they share in your own holiness, and nothing made you do it. Thank you for that, and for saying plainly that it’s for seeing you. Thank you for an hour of peace I didn’t work for, from people on a bench who never learned my name. I’d like to see you.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
