The OrchardExemplo

Patience: 1 Peter 2:21–25

Read through the poem twice. After taking time on the first reading to familiarize yourself with the poem, on the second, take time to ponder and notice.

Christ, the Suffering Healer

21 You have been called to suffering
because Christ also suffered for you,
leaving you a path to follow in the steps of him

22 who never committed a sin or spoke a lie,

23 who didn’t retaliate when he was reviled;
who didn’t strike back, when he was hit.

24 Rather, he committed himself to the righteous Judge
when he took our sins to the tree
and healed us with the wounds inflicted on his body.

25 Now we can die to sin and live right with God,
no longer straying from our Shepherd
but staying close to the Sentinel of our souls.

Philip Comfort, The Poems and Hymns of the New Testament. Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers. www.wipfandstock.com

Philip Comfort’s notes on the word path in the third line of the poem indicate the underlying Greek word can be “used in teaching settings as an alphabet exemplar leaving space under each letter for the student to copy.” This is a key concept in the poem as Peter is urging us to follow Christ’s example.

Consider closely that example of Christ, not only did he not retaliate at his unjust treatment, but he provided what we needed; healing from sin and the ability to live rightly with God. That ability that was lost right at the beginning in the garden of Eden.

Jesus’ example is one of loving patience par excellence. A difficult example to copy no doubt with those around us and a path which involves suffering but we walk together with Christ on that path. He teaches and encourages us and guards our souls on that path.

The idea of an exemplar is the basic structure of the music, which uses the first basic phrase and then varies it three times as a four-line melody. Each restatement of the four-line melody then simply adds ornamentation. The basic phrase also includes hints of the Spirit motif from the very beginning of Love.