Devotions based on James Smith’s book, The Good and Beautiful Community

We are called a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people. I Peter 2:9.  Peculiar means different and strange and as Christians we should be different from the world. If we are truly following Jesus and led by the Holy Spirit, we will transcend the laws of our culture.  When persecuted we will bless and love instead of getting even!  When cursed  we will repay with blessings?  Do we live by the higher law of love? Do others want to know Him because they see us a people who have peace, joy, and love?  The God we serve is extraordinarily different than any other god the world has ever heard of. He loves us so much that He became one of us and died for us when it is not deserved. He is generous, good, loving, and peculiar…His ways are not our ways or His thoughts our thoughts. ( Is. 55:8)  His desire is to transform us into peculiar people who love others, even if they don’t love us in return. It is all too easy to be like our culture where we treat people as objects for personal gain etc. Let us cut against the grain and become a community of people rooted in another world. Let us have the courage to love and forgive the unlovely and the unforgivable as He does us.