1 Peter 1:1-9
“How I wish there were some place called the land of beginning again . . .” Do you ever wish for a new start? Peter found his in relationship with the risen Lord. Later as he wrote to scattered, suffering Christians he reminded them that we are born again into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. What does the resurrection really mean for followers of Jesus? We live with hope, even when we face trials and grief.
Quotes
Henri Nouwen: You have to celebrate your chosenness constantly. This means saying "thank you" to God for having chosen you, and "thank you" to all who remind you of your chosenness. Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are not an "accident," but a divine choice.
W. Paul Jones: What one sees depends on where one sets up one's shop. Mine is at the entrance of the empty tomb.
G. K. Chesterton: Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all...As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.
Dallas Willard: Christian hope isn't about looking around at the state of things now and trying to imagine where it's all going. It's not about trying to calculate the future from the present. It's about breathing now the fresh air of the ending, tasting the spices and sipping the wine of the feast to come.
Jeremy Begbie: Lord, you are the Creator and the Sovereign, but why did the wind come like a snake and tear our roofs off? Why did a mob cut short the life of one of our own children, when he had everything to live for? Over and over again, Lord, we are in the midst of death.
Emily Dickinson: Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.
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