Let's spend some time with 2 Peter. It's a letter we don't read often. Most scholars believe that the letter was written many years after Peter's death. In the ancient world, it was acceptable for people to write in the name of people who had died. This was the author's way of letting people know their point of view and earlier readers would have recognized the references to Peter "as literary devices used in this type of writing" (Lutheran Study Bible). The author used Peter's point of view to address a major issue in the early church: what does unity look like? There was then, as there is now, many different perspectives about what it means to follow Jesus. And the author of 2 Peter wanted us to lean into the promises of Jesus more than assuming that our interpretation of Jesus was what faith was all about.

So how do we recognize an interpretation from the promise of Jesus? That's sometimes hard to do because we, as humans, are in the business of interpretation. We are constantly processing new experiences through the entirety of our story. If you've ever gone through something a family member or friend, we're often surprised by the slight differences that show up when we talk about the experience afterwards. The things that popped out to us didn't matter to our friend or the feelings our friend had were emotions that were nowhere near our radar. Even though we went through the exactly same experience, our interpretation of that experience is always different. We are not objective nor are our opinions facts. Rather we use our interpretation as a way to make sense of our world. And even though there are facts that never change, how we interpret those facts will be how we follow Jesus into the world.

The author of 2 Peter wanted, I think, for us to admit that we do interpretation. We should never be so hard-nosed about our own views that we refuse to listen to other people. When it comes to faith, our experience of God's grace is not the limit to what's possible with God. Our faith is exactly that: ours. And it's God who gives the gift of faith to us and to others in the exactly way that they need. It isn't our job to show people what they need to believe. Rather, we are called to share what we believe. And that begins by living into our experiences of Jesus - experiences we have in worship, in prayer, and in our daily lives. Center your faith in where you have met God. And let that fact fill you with a love that will sustain you all of your days.