Ready Always

A staff room at ten past twelve, and somebody who has never raised the subject before puts it straight to you: how do you still believe any of that? The room has heard the question. You have a speech ready and it answers a different one.

The word Peter chooses for answer is apologia, out of a courtroom. It is what a man says on his feet in his own defence after the charge has been read, and Paul opens his speech on the barracks stairs with it: hear ye my defence which I make now unto you. An apologia is an account of yourself, about what you have done and why, and Peter asks for a reason of the hope that is in you: a report on something already in the room.

The setting is not a debate either. He is writing to people who suffer for righteousness' sake, and he steadies their fear by quoting Isaiah with one name changed. Isaiah had written Sanctify the LORD of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. Peter writes sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. The answer is owed to every man that asketh you, so somebody has already noticed something and come over. And two conditions get dropped whenever this verse is used to sell an apologetics course: with meekness and fear, and, in the next line, having a good conscience.

When the verse is put to work, two failures wait either side of it, and the loud one is easier to see. An answer with the meekness taken out wins the exchange and closes the person, and Peter has ruled on that already: not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing. The quiet failure is a life that raises no question at all. Ready always was written to people whose neighbours could see something worth asking about. If nobody has asked you anything in a year, a better argument is not the missing piece.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 301 is Protected from Second Death (Revelation 2:11).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two