Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion
your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist
him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in
all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.
And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of
all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself
restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the power forever
and ever. Amen.
1 Peter
5:8-11
There’s no showoff translation for this one (see yesterday’s devotion for the showoff translation.)
I first heard these verses in seminary. They are one of the options for the Lesson in Compline, or Prayer at the Close of the Day (or, as they’ve now taken to calling it, Night Prayers, which sounds like a horror b-movie starring Tawny Kitaen and India Allen, but I digress).
At the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg we prayed Compline in the little prayer chapel off of the chancel in the Church of the Abiding Presence. There were electric candles on dimmer switches and the walls were decorated with icons. In that dark little room in a big drafty echo-prone building alone on the dark Seminary Ridge the howling of the wind sent chills up my spine every time. One could honestly believe that there were forces at work out there in the darkness, that if the lights failed nothing would stop the horrible onslaught.
“Your adversary, the Devil, prowls around like a lion, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.”
Sin is undeniable. It stains us. It poisons us. It seeps into our bones. It binds us in fetters. It feasts upon us. I don’t know “why”. I can’t explain why there is Sin. Sin just exists. These words from 1 Peter remind us that Sin is always with us. The limits on life, the pain, the evil, the sickness, and all the bad things really do exist, and no sugarcoating or denial can erase them. Only God can erase them, and God promises to do so. God has always been at war with the Devil, or, more properly put, sending away Sin. This work is ongoing, and it is incomplete. Holy Saturday captures this reality. What’s done is done. We are in bondage to Sin. The crucified one is dead. The day of resurrection is coming, and we wait for it. In the meantime be advised—there are a lot of things out there (and in us) that are against God. God forgives them, but they will gladly devour you today.
Reverend Timothy A. Leitzke