Faith and hope from a distance

Peter tells his readers that Christ "was known before the foundation of the world, but was revealed in the last times for your sake. Through Him you believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and glorified Him; and so your faith and hope are in God." For your sake. People who never met Jesus are told that his whole story was aimed at them.

In the session, Jeff Reed pointed out how far these believers were from the events they trusted. They had not been in Jerusalem for the empty tomb. They were scattered, cut off from the church where it all began. "And so even with that, your faith and hope are still in God," he said. They were some of the first to believe without seeing any of it.

Most of us who serve online know that distance well. We pray for people we will never meet, teach people we only know by a username, and trust that something real is happening on the other side of a screen. Peter's readers lived that way first, and he never treats their faith as second-hand. Distance from the event is not distance from God.

Today, if your ministry feels thin because it is far away, read verse 21 slowly. Your faith rests on the God who raised Jesus from the dead, not on how close you are to the action. That is enough to build a life on, and enough to keep serving the people you cannot see.