“For this very reason (because God has given us all things, and we are becoming more and more like him), make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:5-8). Peter provides here a good and revealing mirror into which we can gaze throughout the day and measure our lives as we live in the world. A good question to ask of ourselves: How, precisely, do our lives look differently than people in the world? Are our lives looking more and more like Christ?
Spirit of God, who dwells within my heart,
wean it from sin, through all its pulses move.
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as you are,
and make me love you as I ought to love. --George Croly (1854)
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