If you think about it, 1 Peter had to be a very revolutionary letter to the church. Peter, a jew and disciple of Jesus, repeatedly asserts how Christ’s work on the cross put Jews and Gentiles on the same playing field. Until the cross, there was a clear line between the two groups because the Jews were God’s chosen people under His covenant with Abraham. But Jesus’ spilt blood on the cross meant that not only Jews but Gentiles as well could be brought into the family of God and enjoy the same inheritance, grace, and spirituality that was reserved for Jews only up to that point.

vWhen babies are born, no one has to teach them to suck. It’s a natural instinct so deeply embedded in them that they can even do it from inside the womb. Towards the end of a pregnancy, babies are known to drink in amniotic fluid using that sucking mechanism. This way, when they’re born, they can go right to drinking milk from the mother. They don’t starve or have to wait days and days to figure out how to eat. They are born doing it. I knew all this in a clinical sense before I was a mother, but once my daughter was born, I marveled at God’s design. It is nothing short of a wonder that a child is born and instinctively knows that their mother, who they have only known from the inside and is all of a sudden an external presence to them, has milk to drink. And it’s even more of a wonder that that child’s little tummy is so small that only a few drops is enough to not only satisfy their hunger, but also to slowly grow that baby into a nourished child. Because at first, that’s all the mother makes– a few drops. It takes days before her milk fully comes in and months before it establishes.