Click the links below to read the lectionary passages for today, Monday, December 18.

Psalm 41, 52 – Morning

Psalm 44 – Evening

Isaiah 8:16-9:1

2 Peter 1:1-11

Luke 22:39-53

Today’s Featured Verses – 2 Peter 1:5-8

For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (NRSV)

Quite a checklist that the writer gives us here.  My first thought is that I wouldn’t know where to start when it comes to getting these things down.  Do I start with goodness or with self-control or godliness?  Or does my life and faith require more of one of the other qualities listed?  It’s hard to decide because I am lacking in every quality mentioned.

But then, when I look at this litany again, I see that the foundation for everything is simply this:  love.  That is where I need to begin.  Taking what the writer says and reversing it would cause these verses to read, and rightly so:  “Love supports mutual affection, and mutual affection supports godliness, and godliness supports endurance, and endurance supports self-control, and self-control supports goodness, and goodness supports my faith.

So it all begins with love, for me and perhaps for you as well.  Somehow I think I knew this already.