1 Peter 1

Well, today was 'quiet day'. This might sound strange to you but it is a day when the extroversion of life is suppressed and the introverts revel in the silence and awe of life without talking. Lectures are cancelled and students are encouraged to find God in the silence. (Lunch was a little strange though - about twenty people silently eating bread and soup with a 'prayerful' look in their eyes and a heavenly glow on their faces!!!) It has been a good few hours and i took the time to look ino and meditate on 1 peter 1. It's an awesome chapter and i found within myself a desire to re-write it in my own words. So I took a copy of the TNIV, a copy of The Message Remix and a New Bible Commentary and I opened 'Bible Gateway - Young's literal Translation' on my internet browser and proceded to write my thoughts. This is what came out:


Peter, a man sent of Jesus Christ
To those chosen of God and yet rejected and despised by all others. To people chosen by and within the ancient knowledge of Yahweh, the true Father, through the life-transforming work of His Holy Spirit by which you are able to follow His son, Jesus the Saviour, by whose sacrifice we enter into a life bringing agreement:
May you know the fullness of His grace and may his peace be multiplied within you.
The highest honour goes to our true father, the father of Jesus, the Saviour! It was this Saviour who, in the abundance of his love, rebirthed us into renewed hope by the death-overcoming resurrection of Himself. And this rebirth brings you into a reward that is incorruptible and undefiled. An inheritance that is unfading and which is reserved for you with our True Father. It is you who, within the all-protecting power of this Father, are surrounded by his shielding love because of your strong belief in Him. And this protection guards you until the swift-coming of His complete wholeness and healing that will be revealed at the end of all time. It is because of these things you have intense gladness even though you have had to endure temporary sufferings of all varieties. These sufferings cause your belief in the Father (a belief that is of greater worth than gold which is temporary but which is also proved by fire) to be shown to be strong so that He, our Father, may receive the greatest honour, respect and glory when Jesus the Saviour emerges victorious at the end. Even though you have never met Jesus the Saviour in person, you offer Him your love. And even though you still do not see him you offer him your trust and it is this that saturates you with inexpressible gladness and joy because you know you will earn the wages for your belief in Him – Total, everlasting, whole and wonderful life.
Regarding this wonderful life, the Father's spokespeople from ancient times who saw a glimpse of this life and who told what they could regarding it, desperately sought details regarding the situation and circumstances surrounding the future pain and anguish which the Saviour was to endure as foretold by the Holy Messenger of God – The Holy Spirit. They came to realise that they were not working for themselves when they told of these things – they were working for you. You who now, by the command of the true Father, have been told of these foretellings by those present-day people speaking the Father's words through the enabling of the Holy Comforter and Messenger of God. Even the Angels wanted to gaze into this mystery.
Therefore, with your thoughts and minds continually prepared and ready, place all of your hope on the awesome grace that will be fulfilled in you at the victorious emergence of Jesus the Saviour at the end of time. As close followers of Him, keep from collapsing back into your previous world of evil, self-fulfilling ignorance but imitate the Father who Called you. He is pure and perfect, you need to become pure and perfect – just like He told you!
Since you believe in and cling to a true Father who reviews each individual life without favouritism or bias, live your life as a passing journey in the complete awe and respect of the true Father. You know that you were not brought from you ancestral and inherited ignorance to wonderful purity by earthly costs and money, but with the bloody sacrifice of the pure and sinless Saviour Jesus – the one who was fore-known and fore-chosen by the Father before time and who has fulfilled his mission only now, near the end of all things. It is because of this saving act by this sinless Saviour that you have come to know and trust in the true Father, the Father that overwrote the saviour's death and glorified him in resurrected life. Your trust and fresh hope are now in this Father.
You have been made pure because of your close following of the truth by the help of the Spirit of the Saviour and this purity has produced in you selfless love and compassion for one another. Love one another intensely and out of a pure heart. For you have been rebirthed, not as a result of temporary, earthly conception, but as a result of holy, purified, everlasting conception, by the very words of the Father – the living, unending words of the living, unending Father.
It's as the ancient spokesman of the Father said: “Earthly life is like the grass and the best things of people are just wild flowers in a field. The grass is failing and fading and the flowers eventually droop and die. The words of the true Father, however, are everlasting and will continue forever.” These are the words that have been spoken to you.

May I and you truly come to see the intense hope in the Father that is made availabe to us through Jesus Christ and that is enacted within us through the Holy Spirit. Blessed be His name, Amen

Disclaimer: This is not necesarrily an accurate translation from the greek!!! (Please don't burn me as a heretic...)