Be Holy as I Am Holy

Be Holy as I Am Holy

Brother Lawrence was a seventeenth-century Carmelite monk who spent most of his life in the kitchen, washing dishes. He is known not for spectacular religious experience but for a simple practice: doing ordinary things with complete awareness of God's presence. His collection of letters and conversations, The Practice of the Presence of God, has shaped Christian spirituality for four centuries. He described holiness not as religious achievement but as sustained attention to God in the ordinary moments. 'The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer,' he wrote. 'In the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees.'

Peter's call to holiness quotes Leviticus 19:2 — the core of the Holiness Code in the Old Testament. But the context in 1 Peter is grace: 'he who called you is holy.' The call to holiness is not a demand that produces guilt; it is an invitation rooted in relationship with a holy God. The word 'holy' (hagios) means set apart, different in character from what surrounds it. God is holy — categorically different from everything else. To be holy is to participate in God's own character, to be progressively shaped into His image. This is not a list of prohibitions; it is a life that increasingly reflects the character of the One who called it. In every ordinary moment today — the kitchen, the commute, the meeting — there is an opportunity for holy life.