God’s Chosen Strangers

NCF Office – July 8, 2025 1 Comment

This week’s blog is a condensed version of a teaching, based off of 1 Peter 1, that Anna Poeht recently gave as a guest speaker at Ravenswood UMC (Chicago). Talking about the risky business of loving as Jesus has called us to love,

Anna says, “…this is messy work. Our call is not to perfection. Our call is to a kind of love that has the capacity to rebuild…This is the work that will bring heaven onto Earth. It is the ultimate call of Christ’s life and work, and is the solidarity that Peter asks us to show each other. True, deep, real love that is rooted in compassion and emotional generosity.”

May we learn to live and love like that! -Melissa Logsdon, NCF Associate Pastor

God’s Chosen Strangers/What is this Love that will not let me go? (by Anna Poeht)

The letter that became the book of 1 Peter begins with an introduction to Peter’s audience. 1 Peter chapter one is addressed to “God’s chosen strangers” (1 Peter 1). I love this language because, in a thousand ways, we are strangers. Peter understands the barrier to trust that comes from a lack of familiarity with each other’s culture. He continues to set up his letter with gratitude for the opportunity that he shares with those who will receive this piece of writing.

In this time, much like in our time, there is great need for hope and for deep and consistent effort in order to make a more just and more beautiful world. Beyond being strangers, we are also simply mortal. Peter knows this too, and later in chapter one reminds his readers of the words of Isaiah, 

“All human life on the earth is like grass, and all human glory is like a flower in a field. The Grass dries up and its flower falls off, but the Lord’s word endures forever.” -Isaiah 40:6-8

This acknowledgement of our temporary nature heads off the second easy excuse of those who are, rightfully, afraid of what it will cost and how much impact it might actually have to dedicate our brief lives to something as important and radical as being the engine of social change. It is terrifying to imagine devoting a lifetime of energy to resisting something that feels inevitable, that feels as powerful as an empire. Peter and Isaiah I imagine are both also considering David’s words:

“The days of a human life are like grass: they bloom like a wildflower; but when the wind blows through it, it’s gone; even the ground where it stood doesn’t remember it. But the Lord’s faithful love is from forever ago to forever from now for those who honor him.” -Psalm 103:15-17

I hear a similar message in a word of wisdom from the prophetic teacher and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. She writes, towards the end of a collection of guidelines for how to be in loving and reciprocal relationship with the Earth, 

“Sustain the ones who sustain you and the Earth will last forever” (RWK, p183)

What does it mean to be God’s chosen strangers other than that we have accepted an invitation to be a temporary witness to an eternal truth? 

The abundance of the natural world that we have been given is as manifest and real an experience of God’s love as I have ever known. What does it matter how long we might get to live, if we dedicate at least some of that time to loving our neighbors, our human neighbors and those who make up our ecosystem. The kind of love that is required of us is the love that Jesus taught.

Peter is passing down that teaching, practicing the lesson of John 15:13, when Jesus says to his disciples “There is no greater love than to give up one’s life for one’s friends”, it is a message with a dual meaning. He is speaking to his coming betrayal and execution, his approaching martyrdom. He is also calling them to, while they live, to give their lives to each other. He is asking them to generously offer their love to their communities. He is calling back, in a way, to Isaiah and to David, who in their writings about the temporary nature of human life both choose to mention the flower, the bloom.

What will we choose to do as flowers in this field? 
In our time as a temporary witness, it is a gift to try and practice the eternal truth of Love. 
It is that Love I hope to be practicing in writing and offering these words to you. I am grateful that you are willing to receive them. -Anna Poeht