Daily Manna · Day 302 · October 29
Perfected After Suffering
“But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.”
Nobody will tell you how long a while is.
That is the whole difficulty of this verse, and it is worth refusing to smooth over. Peter says after that ye have suffered a while. In his Greek it is a small word for a short time, and he was writing to people scattered by persecution who would go on being persecuted for years, some of them until it killed them. He was not misleading them. He was measuring on a different scale from the one they were living on, and that gap is exactly where a person gets tired.
What he does say is precise, and the four verbs are worth slowing down over. Make you perfect is the word used for mending nets, putting back into working order something that tore. Stablish is to make firm. Strengthen is to put power back in. Settle is a builder's word, to lay on a foundation. Mended, firmed, strengthened, founded. And every one of them has God as the subject. None of them is something you do to yourself after the season ends.
So the question stays open, because Peter leaves it open. How long is a while when you are inside it. He does not answer, and neither will anyone honest.
May the God of all grace, which is the name Peter picked for this and not an accident, mend the part of you that has torn this year. May you be put back into working order slowly. And may you be founded on something that was not laid by you.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 302 is At a Price (2 Samuel 24:24).