1 Peter 1:3-6

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

In 2020 my guess is a few of you had passports that were supposed to be used, but were not because of Covid 19.  Perhaps this year another trip has been canceled too.  It’s frustrating when we prepare for something and don’t receive the expected outcome.  Faith can be like that too.  Have you ever had the proverbial rug swept out from your feet in terms of your relationship with God.  It can feel like a cancellation of sorts.  How do we look forward to our future faith journey when our current journey looks different from what we expected?  The answer isn’t easy, but it is at least as old as the first century when we see this text and if we read a little further into the Old Testament we know that it’s much older than that.

You see our plans, our journeys, the world around us all have one constant… Change.  The good news is that we don’t worship a stagnant idol that can’t adapt to change, but a living God who challenges us to begin anew.  When we live for the future this can be troubling.  You can expect more issues to challenge our best laid plans whether in terms of faith or otherwise.  But when we live in the present we realize that whatever we face God is with us.  It doesn’t mean that there won’t be some hard journeys.  It doesn’t mean that plans won’t change.  It means that in whatever we face God is there.  

Gracious God help me to see how you are at work in my life and others this day. 
Amen