Adult
• 5 Sessions of Learner’s Materials
• 5 Sessions of Teaching Materials
• 5 Handouts
1. 1 Peter 1
2. 1 Peter 2
3. 1 Peter 3
4. 1 Peter 4
5. 1 Peter 5
Memorial Day was an important part of my childhood. In the hills of southern Indiana, we called it "Decoration Day" because of the widely observed custom of decorating graves. Decoration Day was not only a time to place cut flowers on the final resting places of ancestors, but also a day to cultivate heritage by recalling the lives of the Wilsons, the Kays, the Purlees, and the Jeffs. The highlight of the pilgrimage was always stopping off at the old Jeffs place--down the road from the New Liberty Baptist Church--where my Uncle Raymond and Aunt Gertrude would have fresh strawberries and old family stories that never grew stale. I always looked forward to Decoration Day, maybe even more than I looked forward to Thanksgiving or Christmas. Decoration Day was a time to cultivate the heritage that was born and nurtured in the lives of my relatives, both dead and living.
The annual trips to cemeteries also offered opportunities to learn other lessons. I learned, for example, that cut flowers don't last as long as potted flowers and that plastic flowers soon fade and grow ugly, even uglier than a naked grave. I remember most vividly the full and brilliant peony bushes planted on some graves in every church yard cemetery we visited in the 1950s. There is no substitute for a live flower with its lush greenery and fragrance.
Memorial Day weekend is the perfect time to take up a study of 1 Peter, an often neglected epistle in the New Testament. First Peter is about keeping hope alive in the face of pressures and circumstances that could possibly extinguish it completely, or worse, turn authentic faith into a pale replica of the real thing. In the opening paragraphs, Peter announces his theme: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you" (1 Pet 1.3-4).
What catches my attention, and I hope yours as well, is Peter's claim that we have a "living hope...that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading." In the face of death and life, authentic Christian hope is alive and growing. Like peony bushes in churchyard cemeteries across southern Indiana, Christian faith is full, vibrant, and able to endure even the direst threats of persecution and death.
Keep hope alive! Cultivate the power and promise of faith and rediscover the heritage we share as followers of Jesus.
by Richard F. Wilson
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