Daily Devotional | March 23, 2020

Hope For Hard Times

Meditations on 1st Peter during COVID-19 

Introduction

Receiving a letter from someone important can mean a lot…especially during hard times. I can remember personally, during some of my hardest days in 15 months of drug rehab how excitedly I would open letters from my family. Receiving a personal note of encouragement and care in the midst of difficult days made everything a bit more bearable. 

The people who opened 1st Peter for the very first time around the year 60 AD would have felt very similar. 

Why? One reason is because they were undergoing very difficult times. In fact, the word for “suffer” is used at least 17 times in this short letter, not to mention other words like “trial” or “grieve.” But even more important than their day-to-day experience was whom they received this letter from. Yes, we can tell from the introduction that this is a letter from Peter, but not just Peter the fisherman or Peter the early church leader. It was from “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,” which means that Peter’s words were delivered to this early church under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. How encouraging, life-giving, and joy-filing must it have been for people living under the weight of difficult days to receive a personal address from God himself! 

The days we are living in some 2000 years later are very different from those of the recipients of 1st Peter, but they remain difficult days nonetheless. First there are the unique trials many of us face in our day to day lives, and then there is the even greater weight many of us are feeling as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. Christians living in Asia Minor in the first century and the people living under the coronavirus outbreak in the year 2020 share this in common: we are people living in difficult days in need of encouragement and hope. It is to such people that Peter under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit writes these words, 

“Cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

— 1 Peter 5:7

In the midst of these difficult days, I want to see God replace your anxiety with truth about his care for you as we consider 1st Peter together. My prayer is that as we meditate on this letter, God’s care would play a more powerful role in your thought life than the anxieties that accompany COVID-19. We don't know how long this virus will last or what we will face in the days to come, but we can rest assured that God is with us and offers us “inexpressible joy” even in the midst of difficult days.

— Will