A LIVING HOPE

Hope. Do you know what that word means? When you know your birthday is coming up, you hope for some great presents. If it’s a rainy day, you hope the sun will come out. If your friends or parents have been really busy lately, you hope they’ll have time to play with you soon. Hope is believing that something good is going to come in the future.

Sometimes, that’s hard. It’s hard to have hope. Instead, we feel hopeless. Do you know what that’s like? Feeling hopeless is when it seems like everything goes wrong, like nothing ever goes right, like your life is never going to be good or happy. 

Are you feeling hopeful or hopeless today?

There were some Christians in the Bible who were tempted to feel hopeless. Life had been hard for them. The worst part was that people were mistreating them because they were Christians. They wondered if there was any hope at all.

Was there? Yes! How? Listen, “In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 3:3-4).

As hard as their lives were, those Christians had a “living hope,” a hope that kept on going and going and living and living no matter what. Where did that hope come from? Jesus! The fact that Jesus rose from the dead meant that they could always have hope.

Why? Because Jesus had given them something that could never perish, spoil, or fade. He had planned something really good for them that no one and nothing could ever take away. What was it? Heaven. Jesus’ resurrection gives us the living hope of heaven.

Even when life is hard, you have a living hope: Jesus! Even when everyone seems against you, there is something who is for you: Jesus! Even when this world makes you said, you have something you can look forward to: Heaven with Jesus! Easter gives us living hope in Jesus.

Prayer:

Dear Jesus, sometimes we feel hopeless. It can seem like everything is hard and bad and we don’t have anything to look forward to. That’s not true! Use the message of Easter to fill us with a living hope in you and your promise of heaven. Amen.