Fix Your Hope
30 Days in 1st Peter - day 8
Hope is underrated.
Everyone needs it. No one ever reaches a place where everything finally feels as it should—in life or in the world. There is always something that needs fixing—a relationship, a health issue, a financial need. And the big question is always lingering – what happens to us after we die?
Hope is what we need. Hope is the forward-looking expectation that something good is coming.
The original recipients of Peter’s letter were facing tremendous pressure. They needed hope. Peter’s counsel to them is to “rest their hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to them at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
We are not to fix our hope in political or social or even religious institutions here on earth. That is not to suggest that we abandon those things or to say they have no value at all. We need good Christians to run for office and serve on school boards. But those are never to be where we anchor our hope. Those things are not futile ways to bring about change, but they are fragile foundations for hope.
A sure and better anchor of hope is the grace that is yet to come at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Why does Peter talk about a grace that is yet to come? After all, haven’t we who have believed already received the grace of God?
We have. But we have merely tasted grace. We are like the husband who has dipped his spoon in the stew his wife is cooking on the stove. He gets a taste, but the full meal is still coming.
This knowledge that so much more is yet to come, saves us from the deep disappointment we might otherwise feel when the people and programs of this world let us down. When institutions don’t deliver what they promised and life is full of turmoil and trouble, we have an anchor of hope in Jesus Christ.
It has been told that while R. G. Lee lay dying in bed, he was staring off into the corner of his bedroom. His daughter, who was at his bedside, asked, “Daddy, what are you looking at?” Pastor Lee, a man who had spent much of his long ministry studying and preaching about the glories of heaven, replied, “I never did it justice.”
That is the idea here. We have grace. We talk about it. We rejoice in it. We experience it. But on that day, when we see Jesus, we will say that we never knew how great that grace really is.
Today, fix your hope on what is sure—the future grace that will be revealed when Jesus Christ appears.
