You are “…an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: I Peter 2:9
I have always liked this verse. Somehow whenever I get to the part about being a peculiar people I am strangely comforted.
I never really fit the mold growing up. Do you know what I mean?
My wife recently went to that movie “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” I couldn’t go with her. Just the previews had me almost breathing into a paper bag because of the flashbacks to childhood.
I was the last kid picked for the sports team in every gym class. I was the kid whose date to the eighth grade prom had to go home early because she got belted in the face by some other kid who thought he was John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever.” I was the kid whose mom made him dance to Lawrence Welk with his sister at every family gathering. I was the peculiar person.
So for years every time I felt a little “less than”, I would go to this verse. read it and tell myself “You are supposed to be weird it’s in the Bible.”
I was so ruined when I learned what the Greek word really meant.
The word peculiar is actually the word “peripoiesis”. It is the condition of being preserved or set aside because of being owned for a specific purpose.
An example of a peripoiesis is a wedding gown owned,worn by a bride on her wedding day, then preserved in a garment bag with mothballs until the day her little girl can wear it at her wedding.
It is the idea of a thing being made holy. A holy thing is a thing that is set aside for God’s purposes. It cannot be used for anything else.
By deciding to live the brick that God has created for me I have stopped living for everything else. I am not my own. I am His. He gets to call the shots. When God says I am a peculiar person He means I am special and that I have a special purpose and that there is no one else like me created for exactly what I have been created for. I am unique, peculiar!
Because I am unique I have to fulfill the role that God has set for me, because there is no one else who can. If I don’t do the things I was made for some of them will never get done because I am set aside for those works and no one else can do them for me without leaving behind their own special work.
This is true of you too Christian. Live the brick. Be peculiar!
Oh and by the way, even though it’s not in the Bible I’m still pretty sure it’s O.K. with God if you’re a little weird.
Reinventing the We'll 