Monday Blues

Engaging | more by Helen Parry | Word for the Week

by Helen Parry (Word for the Week 23-06-08)

You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God. 1 Peter 2:9

It’s Monday morning. How do you feel? Like Mark (Thank God it’s Monday) Greene? Or like Bob (I don’t like Mondays) Geldof? Excited, challenged, fulfilled, raring to go? Or burdened, stressed, overworked, unappreciated, ‘wanting out’? Or perhaps a bit of both?

Peter wrote his great letter of encouragement to Christians scattered throughout Asia Minor, a tiny minority in an essentially pagan environment, often persecuted, seemingly insignificant. To all of them – rich or poor, from Gentile or Jewish backgrounds – Peter addresses these extraordinary words: ‘You are a chosen people, a holy nation, a people belonging to God’. Extraordinary – because he is using words that God addressed to the people of Israel at Sinai (Exodus 19:5,6). These great phrases remind us of our primary status – not as powerless cogs in an irresistible machine (whether the company’s bureaucracy or the world’s economic system), but as members of a unique body – invested with all the honour and dignity of God himself.

So what is facing us on this particular Monday? A crucial decision to make? A deadline to meet? A neighbour or relation to confront? A colleague to comfort or encourage? A contentious meeting to chair? An administrative task to complete? A rowdy class to win over? A special meal to cook? A monotonous routine to invest with a sense of value?

Paul wrote, ‘whatever we do we should work at it with all our heart, as working for the Lord’ (Col 3:23). However, Peter’s point goes deeper – it is not only our work that has value, but we ourselves – individually as well as collectively. Let us, this Monday morning, bask in the glory of our position in Christ – in our election, in our access to God through him, in our calling to be holy before the Lord, and in the enduring fact that God loves us because he loves us.