Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of 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 is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. [1 Peter 1:3-4 (CSB)]
Back in 1957 (long before PETA existed), Curt Richter, a professor at Johns Hopkins, conducted a series of cruel and inhumane experiments to demonstrate the power of hope and resilience in overcoming difficult situations. In this case, the difficult situation was rats being put in a bucket of water with no means of escape and timing how long it took them to drown. After two preliminary experiments, Richter hypothesized that introducing hope to the rats would increase their survival times.
In his third experiment, after being dropped into the water, the rats were observed as they progressed towards drowning but were rescued just before they gave up and died. After being dried and given time to recover, they were then re-immersed and the experiment repeated. Once the rats realized intervention and rescue was possible, they had hope of being rescued again. That glimmer of hope in their tiny rodent brains was a motivating factor for their perseverance and resilience and, instead of giving up and drowning within 15 minutes as they earlier did, they managed to swim 60 to 80 hours before finally giving up and drowning in exhaustion. (I said the experiment was cruel!)
In theory, Richter’s study applies to people as well as rats—if we have hope, we can survive (or at least survive longer) but, without hope, we will surely give up and drown. In 1 Peter, we find the Apostle writing to early Christians scattered throughout Asia Minor. Probably written around 64 AD, these new believers were encountering hostility and, before the year ended, they would experience wholesale persecution after Rome burned. Peter, however, wrote of hope, joy, and a priceless inheritance during their many trials. His message applies to Christians today, as well. Although our hope is eternal life, we don’t have to wait until the future to receive it; it is in the here and now! We have an inheritance that never will fade or decay!
Like all believers throughout time, we will encounter trouble and trials in this world but we can be confident in God’s plan and presence, put fear aside, have resilience in trials, and persevere as we tread water in our challenges! As Christians, we have good reason to keep swimming amid our trials and difficulties. Even if we’re not rescued from our problems in this life, we still have hope. Whether we continue to swim or sink, we’ve already been saved and have another, far better life, yet to come!
It’s been said, “Where there’s life, there’s hope!” The fact of life, however, isn’t what determines hope; it’s the faith of our life that does! As Christians, we have a living hope—a confident expectation that our God is present, faithful, and will do as He says. Unlike Richter and his rats, we know that God is not toying with us nor are we subjects of a cruel experiment. He doesn’t give us hope only to snatch it away; the hope He gives us is both living and lasting. We may not be rats but, like Richter’s subjects, we all need a reason to keep swimming! As Christ’s followers, we have it!
A Christian will part with anything rather than his hope; he knows that hope will keep the heart both from aching and breaking, from fainting and sinking; he knows that hope is a beam of God, a spark of glory, and that nothing shall extinguish it till the soul be filled with glory. [Thomas Brooks]
Jeremiah told the exiles to work and pray for their captors. He explained that it was the shalom (well-being, peace, health, success, safety, and welfare) of their captors that they would ensure Judah’s shalom. For a people who’d been torn from their homeland and Temple, I expect it was difficult to understand how seeking Babylon’s prosperity would help them; but, it did!
Jeremiah 29 consists of two letters written by the prophet to the exiles in Babylon. The first (29:1-28) was sent to the recently deported elders, priests, and prophets as well as to King Jehoiachin, his mother, and the officials, craftsmen, and artisans who’d been taken as Nebuchadnezzar’s captives several years earlier. Countering the message of the false prophets promising a quick return to Jerusalem from Babylon, Jeremiah bluntly told the exiles that Israel’s captivity would last seventy years. This was unwelcome news and, preferring to believe comforting lies rather than the painful truth, people accused Jeremiah of being crazy and a false prophet. The second letter in this chapter addresses one of his accusers.
Most of us breeze through (or skip altogether) the Bible’s genealogies. Nevertheless, when genealogy and all those “begats” seem so important in Scripture, what explanation is there for the difference between the genealogies of Jesus found in Luke and Matthew? Because Jews were meticulous about recording genealogies, it’s inconceivable to have two conflicting yet correct lists of Jesus’ lineage.
The next morning, while Jesus and the disciples walked from Bethany to Jerusalem for yet another confrontation with Judea’s religious leaders, the disciples saw the tree Jesus cursed the previous day. The disciples had witnessed Jesus cast out demons and still a storm with a just a word but, when they saw the withered and dead fig tree, they were amazed. Normally, trees die slowly from the top down but this tree instantly withered from the roots up. With dead roots, no amount of water or fertilizer would revive it. Having witnessed the tree go from abundance to ruin with just a word from the Lord, rather than asking Jesus to explain cursing the tree, the disciples focused on the speed with which the fig died.
Devotions of the Heart 