9.23.2026 - Jody Duncan

September 23, 2026

God Builds His Church through Mercy

1 Peter 2:9-10

Today we read 1 Peter 2:9-10. Read the passage now or at the end of this devotion. Let the scripture speak to you as you connect with God, the Father.

Peter’s words of encouragement here are directed toward the new Christians facing hostilities and persecutions as they embrace Christ and reject their former religious

practices and beliefs. These new believers have bravely stepped out of the mainstream to declare their devotion to Jesus. They are no longer going along to get along. They are outliers, and as such, they have put targets on their own backs.

It is not easy to be an outlier. Human beings have a primal, cellular-level desire to be accepted into their tribe. For hundreds of thousands of years, that acceptance was a matter of life and death. Survival depended on it.

Today, we may be able to survive physically outside the group, but such isolation often leads to significant emotional pain.

It takes guts to stand alone, or even to stand with a small group separated from the larger one – as these early Christians stood. The consequences could be far more severe than just social ostracization. The consequences, as Peter himself would experience, could be fatal.

There is a Gary Larson “Far Side” cartoon that features hundreds of penguins on an ice floe. It is a sea of penguins, each indistinguishable from all the others. Despite this black-and-white conformity, one lone penguin stretches his neck out from the group, singing ‘I Gotta Be Me!’ (A funny sidenote: when the cartoon was made into a poster, the publishers of said poster decided to color the singing penguin a bright yellow – which completely perverted the meaning of the cartoon. The joke was ruined.)

Unlike that brave, individualistic penguin, most of us would prefer NOT to stick our necks out. But the early Christians did. In some parts of the world, it is still dangerous to declare oneself a Christian. And even in the West, where Christianity has flourished, it can be uncomfortable, if not dangerous, to profess one’s faith loudly and explicitly. To be ‘too Christian’ in this secular world invites eye-rolling, ridicule, disdain and, sometimes, outright hostility.

And so, we need Peter’s words of encouragement, just as the early Christians did. We need to remember that, through Christ, we are now “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession…”

We need to remember that through God’s mercy, through the gift of his Son, through Christ’s sacrifice, we have been brought out of darkness and into a glorious light.

Mostly, as Christians, we need to remember that we are in this world but not of this world. Rather, we are the ‘stuff’ of God’s church. We are the bricks, the mortar, the wood and iron.

We are a tribe, yes, but one with a huge welcome mat positioned outside our tent. Come one, come all! You, too, can be part of the chosen people, the royal priesthood, the holy nation. You, too, can be God’s special possession.

Let us be brave enough today to stick out our necks, to declare our Christianity loudly and proudly. Let us be bold enough to invite others to join us. Let us rejoice in being God’s special possession.