“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” 1 Peter 2:9

“Passion is always risky. The Bible gives example after example of people who fell in love with Jesus and left their jobs, their families, their security. Once people met Jesus, their passion became hazardous to their health. People were estranged from the church and rejected by their parents; they became unemployed suddenly, ended up in jail, lost their lives, became personae non gratae, and were accused of being drunkards. Passion is not something to be treated lightly. The passionate life is a risky life. The question is: Is the passionate life worth the risk?” (Michael Yaconelli. Dangerous Wonder: The Adventure of Childlike Faith (p. 116). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.)

I remember the first day I talked to my wife at the church we were both attending. At the time we sang in the choir, and of course she was beautiful, and I was the luckiest man in the world to have her attention. Anyway, in the course of time, we married, and soon were introduced to other young couples, with and without children, and these couples became part of our church and social reality. Over the years I have observed the changes that have happened to all of us, all of the couples. They were changes I never thought would happen when we first met, changes that none of us would ever imagine would happen to us. Some of them lost their passion for each other – others lost their passion for the church. The changes were unimaginable because we thought we were in control of our futures. And in some ways we do have some control, especially control over the passion we have for life, for each other, and for G-d. We will never know where our choices will take us in life, but, as I said in my devotion on December 2, our choices make the future “us”. In the process of making our choices, we should be asking the Holy Spirit to guide us in our choices, and to infuse us with passion.

The church is filled with people: they are not all righteous, not all perfect, and not always passionate. I have said often that our collective identity as Christians comes in the fact that G-d loves us passionately and has chosen us first through our baptisms. This alone, not the people we socialize with, not the people we worship next to, and not the family we come from, but our chosen-ness by G-d is what marks us as G-d’s people. This also should infuse us with a passion for loving G-d and loving our neighbor.

Pastor Dave