In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.—1 Peter 1:3 (NIV)
On a recent trip back to my hometown—a trek I hadn’t taken for too long—I noted some familiar landmarks that hadn’t changed much, but many had changed radically. When had they torn down that old barn and replaced it with a cheese factory? What happened to the car dealership that used to dominate that intersection? The most profound sites for me were the older, once-occupied homes that—vacant for decades—had lost their ability to keep standing.
What happens to a home with no breath? When a house no longer has humans caring for it, living and breathing inside it, the building more quickly crumbles. Seeing those abandoned houses made me wonder: what happens to a human heart that seems to have lost its breath of hope? If uncared for, would it experience the same accelerated crumbling?
The picture of that heart became startlingly clear. A heart without hope quickly falls apart. The presence of Jesus—our eternal hope—breathes life into abandoned, broken, neglected, struggling hearts. As surely as Christ’s first post-death breath changed the tomb from a symbol of supposed defeat and decay to a scene of glorious victory, His breath within me transforms whatever surrounds me too.
Faith Step: Consider someone who appears to be crumbling like an uncared-for house. Send a card, text, or call and share Jesus, your eternal hope.
Adapted from Mornings with Jesus
