Jesus is risen, he is alive and lives forevermore. Now what.
In that first letter of Peter which we just heard Peter is writing to a group of Gentile believers who have come to faith in Jesus. His aim is to answer that question; now what? How are they to live as followers of Jesus in the midst of a culture that is hostile to their newfound faith? But he doesn’t start there, he starts with hope.
Where are we going? At the end of life is there a destination? What’s our hope at the end of all of this? For many it’s a question they’d rather not think about, but for us who are in Jesus, who have put our faith in him, it should be something we dwell on, that drives us onwards.
If you were stuck on a desert island, what would you want to have with you? Have you ever been asked that? It’s a really interesting question to ask people as it starts to give you some insight into who they are, what they like, what matters to them.
Lent is a remembering of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness. It’s a time when he went without anything at all. And so for Christians Lent has often been a time of stripping things back and getting back to the essentials.