Welcome to Whispers of Grace.
As an artist and religion scholar, I hope to offer something honest and personal, as I navigate the same world and serve the same God as you. I pray these reflections bring you value when you read them, as they do me when I write them.
-Rondall Reynoso
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Love, Hospitality, and the Many Forms of God’s Grace
(1 Peter 4:10)
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“Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.”
1 Peter 4:10 NRSVue
Reflection
This verse follows Peter telling the readers to “maintain constant love for one another” and to “be hospitable to one another without complaining.” Love and gracious hospitality set the stage for the claim that we steward God’s manifold grace by serving one another.
The call to serve one another is clearly the main point of this passage. Yes, we must love and serve. But how do we serve?
There is something important in this passage that never really occurred to me before. Manifold isn’t a word we use very often. I personally have often taken it to mean numerous. That is part of what it means. So, in a passage like this, I often thought of manifold grace as abundant grace, as in God has a lot of it.
But that is not what this verse means. Manifold does not just mean a lot of something. It means many kinds or varied. Peter is telling the Church that God shows grace in many ways through the various gifts given to the Church.
Recently, it struck me that part of the 1 Corinthians 13 definition of Love is that “love does not insist on its own way.” (v. 5) That struck me hard. Often, we insist that things must be done our way. We insist that people give and receive love and grace in the way we want them to. That is not love.
Love seeks and wills the good of the other person, whether or not it is how we would have done it.
As stewards of the diverse ways in which God shows his grace to the diversity of humanity, we are called to embrace diversity in the promotion of unity in Christ. Grace, love, and hospitality can be given and received in many ways, even if they aren’t our preference.
