A Hope You Can't Lose

Dear ones,

That is how the letter begins. Two words, first thing, from a man who meant them.

It was written long ago to people who were far from home. They had left the places they loved. Some of them were tired. Some of them were scared. They felt like strangers, like travelers who didn't quite belong anywhere. And the hard things kept coming, one after another, the way waves come.

Maybe you know that feeling. Being somewhere that isn't home yet. One hard thing, and then another.

The man who wrote the letter knew it too. His name was Peter, and there was one thing he wanted to tell them more than anything else in the world.

He wanted to tell them about a hope they could never, ever lose.

Once, the saddest thing happened. Jesus died. And it looked, for three dark days, like every good thing had ended.

But it hadn't.

On the third morning, Jesus stood up alive. Death tried to keep him, and death could not. Peter had seen it with his own eyes: the empty grave, the breakfast cooking on the shore, the friend who was supposed to be gone, smiling at him again.

So when Peter wrote the word hope, he meant something alive. Something with a heartbeat. A living hope, he called it, because the One it rests on is alive forever.

Then his pen hurried on, because there was more.

There is a home being kept for you. An inheritance, he called it, like a treasure your Father is saving with your name written on it. It will never spoil, and it will never fade, and no one can take it, and nothing can spill it out.

You can lose a coin. You can lose a tooth, a toy, a balloon let go on a windy day. But you cannot lose this. It is being guarded. You are being guarded, held by a love stronger than the strongest lock.

So for now, dear ones, you are travelers. The road is long. Sometimes it rains. Sometimes the hard things come like waves, and you cry, and that is allowed.

Then Peter wrote something strange and beautiful about all of it. He said that even now, even on the road, even though you have never once seen Jesus with your eyes, you can love him. You can be glad. A gladness so big there are hardly words for it, bubbling up right in the middle of the hard things.

Because the hope has already begun. Right now. Inside you. Jesus is alive, so the living hope is alive too, and it is yours today.

You are not home yet, and you are not lost either. You are loved like a favorite, every single one of you, and your Father is bringing the whole family in. He will not come home without you.

The waves are real, and the shore is real, and the shore is where he is standing.

And one day, the day you finally see his face, you will know what your heart has been singing about all along. Peter sealed his letter and sent it across the sea, to tired people on a long road, so they would keep walking. Keep walking, dear ones. The face you are walking toward is already turned, watching for you.