Thus, we are the stones, the living stones, to which John and Jesus referred, and from such as we are the children of Abraham formed. This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as descendants. Peter and Paul were two very different men. One had known Jesus first hand, the other encountered him only after Jesus' had died, risen, and ascended. These appeals from Paul to the Romans and from Peter to the whole church contain the central truth about Christianity, one which we do well to heed as we make our Advent pilgrimage to Bethlehem to find the Babe lying in a manger, there to fall on our knees like the Magi in adoration and worship.
Worship comes first.
Worship changes us. To worship is to quicken the conscience by the Holiness of God, To feed the mind with the Truth of God, To purge the imagination by the Beauty of God, To devote the will to the Purpose of God. The ways in which Christian churches worship vary enormously. But whatever outward shape it takes, Christian worship always happens in, and responds to, the tension between two contrasting truths about God, truths which come to the fore during Advent. It is the tension between these apparently contradictory truths which changes us.