I read some Scripture to Chelsea last night. It happened to be 1 Peter 1:3-9, where the apostle Peter speaks of the living hope Christians have through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

A living hope.

That phrase kept me up late.

I think about the ups and downs in life. More than just my own, the ups and downs of history, of friendships, of family, and of society as a whole. I think about the saying that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. I think about the political state of our country. I consider the challenges ahead.

We can do tremendous harm to one another and to the world we inhabit. But do we ever consider our limits? Like how much control do we have over this life when, from the beginning, it was never really ours for the choosing?

Yet I wonder who will lead us next.

I wonder if anyone really leads us at all.

I see political commentators sharing their opinions on the recent midterm elections. They are concerned for the fate of the country, like they always are. Their commentaries are chock-full of woes and worries about this or that. It’s a revolving door of problems with no exits. And that’s part of the design.

I understand their concerns. I have concerns of my own. And so do you. But maybe we are so concerned with being heard that we cannot possibly listen.

After all, listening is about receiving something, which fits the nature of the existence we find ourselves in. Not one of us chose it. We’ve all received it.

I think about the world ahead. I wonder whether it will be as good as the one left behind.

I’m not referring to the “glory days” as we typically put it. I am wondering about the past none of us remembers. The past that holds the secrets of our beginnings, truths that would shape our present understandings and enlighten us to our endings.

There’s so little we actually know, and what we fear most we know least. It’s the dreadfulness of aging and dying. Death is foreign to us; we do not know it and that terrifies us. But is life, at its root, our mere knowledge of something? I believe life is something else entirely.

Life is the gift of being known by God before you know anything yourself.

Do you remember life before memory? Don’t you recall your former life of dependence? What about life before you knew you were alive?

Just consider the newborn child. That was once you. Now you are older, and maybe you can’t remember your birth, but you know life as you do today. Wasn’t your life valuable when you didn’t know it? Who could honestly say it wasn’t?

You were dependent on someone before you knew who that someone was. You had needs before you could name them. God loved you before you knew what love was. And you were alive before you could tell anyone what it meant to live.

There are many things we want from this life, but where did our needs go?

There is life in the plant, so long as it is rooted in soil. There is life in the creatures of the sea, so long as they remain in water. There is life in the human, so long as he is rooted in God.

That’s why Jesus had to die. Because human wants do not align with human needs. Our greatest need is reconciliation with God, yet our sin is precisely what separates us from him.

We didn’t realize how much we needed him, so he came to us, lived among us, and died for us. Three days later, he rose again and appeared to hundreds of eyewitnesses, so that we can have this living hope today. It transcends every political, personal, and societal issue we could ever face. Because it isn’t tied to a policy, a party, or a product; it’s tied to an everlasting Person.

This doesn’t mean we have no reason to grieve or be concerned. Peter speaks of trials, too. We still live through them, even as we hold on to the hope we have been given.

Yet we know the model. It’s the good king who lays down his life for his people, who brings them into his kingdom by his own blood. Not because the people loved him, but because he first loved them.

I’ve been blessed to hear this gospel message many times over, but it is still hard for me to remember. So I wrote these words down as a reminder.

Next time I worry about who will lead our country, I will remind myself of the One who conquered the world.

Next time I get concerned about the future, I will remind myself of the God who came to me from all of eternity.

None of this or that or whatever comes next surprises him. The “living hope” Peter speaks of does not depend on my knowledge of what comes next. It depends on the resurrected Savior.

And because he lives, my hope does too.