Daily Manna · Day 272 · September 29
A Living Hope
“According to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you.”
Almost everything people hope in is cut flowers.
They are genuinely beautiful and they are already dying when you carry them home. That is not cynicism, it is what cut means. The job, the treatment plan, the promise somebody made to change: real, lovely, stem severed. Spend enough hope on them and you start buying fewer flowers, which is what most careful adults have quietly done.
Peter is writing to people scattered and in heaviness through manifold temptations, and he does not tell them to cheer up. He points at an empty tomb and then uses three words for what is being held for them. Incorruptible: it does not rot. Undefiled: it cannot be stained by anything. And that fadeth not away, which in his Greek is a flower word, the name of a bloom the ancients said would not wilt. He is standing in the flower shop pointing at the one arrangement that is not dying. Then he adds reserved in heaven for you, which is the language of something kept under guard with a name written on it.
Father, I have been careful with my hope because I have watched so much of it wilt, and I have called that wisdom. Show me the difference between what is cut and what is rooted. Keep on keeping what you are keeping, and make me want it. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 272 is Lord and Master (John 13:14).