Tag Archives: 1 Peter 1

Wise Investments

February 10, 2026 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear.
1 Peter 1:17 (NIV)

I’m always amazed how much you learn about someone simply by listening.

The old man at the retirement center had a lot on his mind. His brain worked at a feverish pace despite being advanced in years. I was impressed. I could almost see it spinning inside his silver pated cranium as the stream of his consciousness flowed from his lips.

Money.
Finance.
Business.
Debts.
Investments.
Real Estate.
Savings.

The future.

When my new acquaintance learned that I was once a pastor there a definite shift in the course of his stream of consciousness. The questions started flowing directly at me.

Along the journey, I’ve had a number of people want to pick my brain about prophecy and the end times. Some chase theories. Others chase reassurance.

What’s going to happen to me?
How afraid should I be?
How can I insulate myself from what’s coming?

For the sharp old man, I sensed there was a hope of leveraging insider knowledge for personal gain. In every market crash there are always a few who make a fortune. I could see his brain calculating the possibilities.

It was a fascinating conversation, even though I think I may have disappointed him. The greatest religious scholars of Jesus’ day were completely wrong in their theories regarding who the Messiah would be. They didn’t even recognize Him when He was standing among them. The only ones who correctly interpreted His arrival were Zoroastrian priests from Persia who arrived with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

If all of those religious scholars got it wrong with Jesus first coming, I suspect we’ll all get it wrong with Jesus’ second coming. Even Jesus shrugged and said He didn’t know when it would be. I think trying to predict anything is a fool’s errand. I was sorry to disappoint my new friend looking for an edge.

I dusted off one of my favorite old jokes for him and told him I when it came to Revelation I consider myself a “pan-tribulationist.” It’s all going to pan-out in the end.

[cue: rimshot]

As I left the retirement center that day I thought about my new friend. What struck me most about our conversation was how invested he was in this earthly life. He had been retired for who knows how many years. Who knows how many days he has left on this earthly journey but it doesn’t take a prophet to know there’s a precariously small amount of sand left in his hourglass. Even if he reads the tea leaves and escapes the coming Tribulation as the one who made the right financial play, what will it profit him?

I felt a pang of sadness as Jesus’ words echoed in my soul.

“Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or—worse!—stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.”
Matthew 6:19-21 (MSG)

Peter’s letter was written to a largely non-Jewish audience of Jesus followers. Like the recipients of James’ letter, these believers had been scattered by persecution. Interestingly, Peter begins his letter to non-Jewish believers by referencing a deeply Jewish paradigm: exile.

Exile is one of the overarching themes of the entire Great Story. Some scholars consider it the primary theme. As these believers live scattered abroad living in strange places far from the homes they knew Peter is saying to his Gentile brothers and sisters, “Welcome to the club!”

Later in the chapter, Peter takes the paradigm a step further. He tells his audience to consider themselves permanent “foreigners.” As the old song says, “This earth is not our home, we’re just passing through,” or the other old song I personally favor, “I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger travelin’ through this world of woe.”

Peter was urging his fellow believers to embrace the very words Jesus spoke to him. Consider your investment strategy.

Eighty-years or so on this earth – I leave everything behind.
Eternity waits beyond, and I can begin investing today.

I don’t know. If I really believe what I say I believe, then the portfolio I really want to invest in seems pretty clear.

I never saw my friend again. By now, I suspect his earthly journey is finished.

I hope he made some deposits in his eternal accounts.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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Chapter-a-Day

The Sower and the Seeds

November 6, 2019 Tom Vander Well 4 Comments

From Peter, an apostle of Jesus the Anointed One, to the chosen ones who have been scattered abroad like “seed” into the nations living as refugees…
1 Peter 1:1 (TPT)

I’ve always had an appreciation for Vincent Van Gogh. The tragic Dutch artist who failed at almost everything in his life, including his desire and failed attempt to become a pastor. The story of his descent into madness is well known, along with his most famous works of a Starry Night, sunflowers, and his haunting self-portraits.

I find that most people are unaware that one of Van Gogh’s favorite themes was that of a sower sowing his seed. He sketched the sower from different perspectives and painted multiple works depicting the lone sower, his arm outstretched and the seed scattered on the field.

This morning I’m jumping from the ancient prophet Zechariah to a letter Peter wrote around 30 years after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. In recent months, I’ve been blogging through texts that surround the Babylonian exile 400-500 years before Jesus. But that wasn’t the only exile recorded in God’s Message. Peter wrote his letter to followers of Jesus who had fled persecution from both Jews and Romans in Jerusalem. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, exile is a consistent theme in the Great Story.

At that point in time, thousands upon thousands of people had become followers of Jesus and were creating social upheaval by the way they were living out their faith. They were caring for people who were marginalized, sick, and needy. When followers of Jesus gathered in homes to worship and share a meal, everyone was welcome as equals. Men and women, Jews and non-Jews, and even slaves and their masters were treated the same at Christ’s table. This was a radical shift that threatened established social mores in both Roman and Jewish culture. So, the establishment came after them with a vengeance.

Peter begins his letter to the Christian exiles by immediately claiming for them a purpose in their exile. He gives the word picture of being the “seed” of Christ scattered by the Great Sower to various nations. They were to take root where they landed, dig deep, and bear the fruit of the Spirit so that the people around them might come to faith in Christ. God’s instructions through the prophet Jeremiah to the Babylonian exiles could just as easily apply to them:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
Jeremiah 29:4-7 (NIV)

And, in the quiet this morning I realize that it can also apply to me wherever my journey leads me. There is a purpose for me wherever that may be. I am the seed of Christ. I am to dig deep, create roots, draw living water from the depths, grow, mature, and bear the fruit of love, joy, peace, perseverance, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I can’t help but think of Van Gogh, the failed minister who found himself in several exilic circumstances that inspired his paintings. I’ve read his letters, and I find that scholars tend to diminish or ignore the role of faith in Vincent’s life and work, despite his many struggles. Then I think of that sower who shows up again and again in his work. I can’t help but wonder if when he repeatedly sketched and painted the sower, if he thought about his works being the seed of God’s creativity he was scattering in order to reflect the light which he saw so differently than everyone else, and so beautifully portrayed. I find it tragic that he never lived to see the fruit of his those artistic seeds. Yet, I recognize that for those living in exile, that is sometimes the reality of the journey.

Chapter-a-Day

Lover Lessons

May 12, 2017 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

…love one another deeply, from the heart.
1 Peter 1:22b (NIV)

As I press on in this life journey I have actively attempted to be a continually better lover. Jesus said that all of God’s law can be summed up in two commands:

Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Love others as you love yourself.

And, so, I have endeavored to be a better lover. I realize, as I meditate on it this morning, that I’ve learned a few things along the way. I’m pondering some of the things I’ve observed about love…

If I am unwilling or unable to accept that I am lovable and receive deeply the love, grace, and forgiveness of God and others, then I will be handicapped in my capacity for love and my ability to give it away.
To be an increasingly better lover I must embrace that it is part of my journey in this life and in this life I will never arrive at an acceptable destination. The deeper I grow in love the more fully I appreciate how utterly shallow my love is and how strong is the call to grow still deeper.
I can’t wait for others to become lovable in my estimation before I love them. Not only is this judgmental and unloving, but others never arrive at an acceptable estimable level. I have to start with loving others without qualification and as I grow in my love-giving I receive the priceless experience of understanding how absolutely lovable they are.
Love is sometimes soft and warm. Other times love is hard and even cold. Love can even be painful at times in both the giving and receiving. Wisdom and discernment develop as I mature as a lover for they are increasingly required to grow still deeper in love.
I can be loving in all that I do with all whom I encounter, but mature depths of love are generally only reached through increasingly intimate depths of relationship over time. That level of mature, intimate love can only be reached with a small number of relationships, but those few mature relationships increase my capacity and ability to love far more people at a deeper levels.
In rare cases, the most loving thing I can do is walk away.

In this morning’s chapter, Peter urges not only that we love, but that we love deeply and from the heart.

I’m still working on it (and I always will be).

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day 1 Peter 1

October 1, 2012 Tom Vander Well 3 Comments

So think clearly and exercise self-control. 1 Peter 1:13a (NLT)

As I read through these words from this morning’s chapter, I was reminded of the British war time posters that have become all the rage in recent years. Millions of the posters, which simply state “Keep Calm and Carry On” were made by the British Ministry of Information in 1939 to boost morale during World War II, but for an unknown reason the posters were only distributed in limited numbers and were little known. In 2000, the posters were rediscovered and have become a popular theme on all sorts of products and parodies.

Perhaps it’s the coupling of two simple commands that made my brain make the connection. “Think clearly and practice self-control” is just as relevant an admonishment in times of war or peace. It’s worthy of daily reminder.

We are bombarded with so much information and misinformation on a daily basis from an increasing number of media outlets and apps. Clear thinking is not always an easy task in the midst of it. Our chapter-a-day journey is one way that I try to feed my thinking with eternal, spiritual truths rather than momentary sound bytes. The daily perspective from God’s Message helps my mind and soul cut through the glut of useless and temporal noise.

Exercising self-control is an equally important command worthy of daily reminder. Wendy and I have been doing a lot of thinking about and discussion around the idea of appetites recently. A few weeks ago we spent a drive to Des Moines talking about the traditional “seven deadly sins” (lust, gluttony, wrath, sloth, pride, greed, envy) and made the observation that each of the “sins” are natural human appetites out of control. Likewise, the result of each is destructive to both self, intimacy with God and intimacy with others. Our journey towards maturity, wisdom and spiritual wholeness requires an ever and increasing measure of self-control over our human appetites and inclinations.

Today, I’m reminding myself to “think clearly and exercise self-control.”