Your Living Hope

As we puddle along day by day, I think it's all too easy for us to take life for granted. For better or worse, we're living, breathing and doing all the things we have to do. Until … we're not.

Each morning when I wake up, I thank God for my night's sleep, the breath in my lungs and the new day, whatever it may bring. It's my little form of resistance against becoming too complacent about the gift of life.

It's that thought, that notion of the preciousness of life, that makes me see these words from the Apostle Peter's letter to a bunch of persecuted 1^st Century Christians in a whole new light:

1 Peter 1:3-4 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God has great mercy, and because of his mercy he gave us a new life. This new life brings us a living hope through Jesus Christ's resurrection from death. Now we wait to receive the blessings God has for his children. These blessings are kept for you in heaven. They cannot be ruined or be destroyed or lose their beauty.

Peter watched as Jesus was nailed to that cross. There He hung, dead as a door nail … until He wasn't; until He rose from the dead. That's the picture of the new life available to anyone who trusts in what Jesus did for them in paying the price of their sin.

But not only that. Just picture the incredible joy of that resurrection morning as His disciples discovered that Jesus was alive. And receive that incredible joy as Peter talks about the "living hope" available to you. A hope that's alive because Jesus is alive.

That precious new life, that living hope, is available to you in Christ and Christ alone.

That's God's Word. Fresh … for you … today.