Our hope lives because Christ lives. Our hope cannot fail because Christ cannot die. He lives and reigns in victory. The writer of Hebrews describes our hope in objective terms in reference to the finished work of Christ. 

“… according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3)
Electric cars have been in the news quite a bit lately, particularly with gas prices going through the roof. One area of concern, however, has been how far EVs can travel on a single charge. Even the most capable of batteries holds the potential of leaving a driver stranded when their charge is depleted.
As Christians, we do not need to be worried about the power needed to reach our destination. Peter tells us we are powered now by the resurrection life of Jesus Christ. Ours is a living hope.
What is a living hope? First, let’s understand what hope is. Hope is not wishful thinking. “I hope it doesn’t rain.” “I hope my team makes the playoffs.” That sort of hope is more hope-so. It carries no assurance, only possibility at worst and probability at best. It offers no certainty.
The hope Peter has in mind is something completely different. It carries absolute certainty. Ours is not a hope-so hope but a know-so hope. It engenders confident expectation, assured conviction, and vibrant certainty. It will neither fail nor will it disappoint.
From our experience, even the surest of things can fail.
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The last thing Hurricane Hilary saw, however, was people desiring to come to church. People were more interested in saving their lives by gathering in long lines for food and water. It was all reminiscent of the same fear that governed the Covid-19 pandemic. In the 90s, David Wells expressed that one of the great problems for people today is that God’s hand rests ever so lightly upon us. The lighter providences we have received in the West, in the face of past atrocities and calamites, has not made us a strong people. We have lived such prosperous lives, having at our disposal the best of medicines and helps afforded to us, that we are convinced that there should be no pain in this life.

One day Henny-penny was picking up corn in the rickyard when—whack!—an acorn hit her upon the head. “Goodness gracious me!” said Henny-penny, “the sky’s a-going to fall; I must go and tell the King…
The past few days on the West coast have been eventful. We were told a massive hurricane was coming our way in Southern California that would wreak havoc on communities and bring in an historic “100-year storm”—an event of such catastrophic proportions that imminent death would follow. Governor Newsom declared a state of emergency, well before the event even occurred. Is that normal? Costco saw long lines of people scrambling to horde water and generators, three at a time. Shelves at the local grocery store were soon found empty as people stocked up on supplies to prepare for what seemed to be the event of a lifetime. We had no idea of what to expect.
Sunday morning, as I was preparing for church, my wife handed me a picture of the Doppler Radar and asked, “where is this storm, I don’t see it.” Other images showed a massive swirl covering the Westcoast, but something seemed off. I then searched the news reports that continued reassure me that the storm was coming and that we should be prepared for the worst.
Then…it happened. The rain fell ever so lightly, and the trees swayed about, knocking down a few leaves, and it was over. I saw pictures of people online walking the beach during what was supposed to be the heart of the storm. All this media hysteria, and this was the extent of the “100-year storm” from which I was told to batten down the hatches?
Some areas did receive significant flooding, and I’m sure there will be reports of damage in desert areas, and even some death, but the most devastating eyewitness testimony I could find was this: “It’s quite amazing. I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Sean Julian, 54, a resident of the town. “I’m seeing a lot more trees down. And there’s a big tree that just fell over there, and I probably shouldn’t be out here.” With that account, the article ended. A tree fell over and I probably shouldn’t be there?
Living on the Pacific Rim has always come with the threat of disasters, especially earthquakes and fires. But this is no less true wherever one lives in this world. After all, Jesus told us to expect these things (Matt. 24). While the news captures the worst of images, does this really compare with Atlantic hurricanes?
On the one hand I am thankful that the storm did not bring the destruction that we were assured would happen, but on the other, it’s always wise to assess the larger problem of what is driving our culture of fear.
God’s Light Hand Upon Us
One doesn’t have to look far to finds tracts and treatises of past theologians who wrote about God’s use of calamity and destruction to awaken people to repentance. I have in front of me David Clarkson’s, “God’s End in Sending Calamities.” People faced terrible things. Plague often wiped-out major populations and most people viewed these things as the scourge of God upon people for sin. Whether providence should always be read this way is for another article, but most pastors had no problem using catastrophic events to call people to Christ.
Daniel Defoe’s “Journal of the Plague Year” is a perfect example. Defoe describes the people coming to the churches in droves crying for prayer and help in the face of bubonic plague. They were certainly coming to the right place. The last thing Hurricane Hilary saw, however, was people desiring to come to church.
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That’s what M’Cheyne was: a God-besotted man, a God-enthralled man. What I found so captivating about him was how captivated he was by Jesus. He was on fire, but not with mere zeal. His heart burned with holy divine love, the kind that is ignited only when one is truly near the holy Fire that burns but doesn’t consume. We can debate for decades over apologetic arguments and textual criticism. We can doubt and wrestle with endless questions. But we can often discern in minutes when we encounter someone who has encountered the Real Thing.

On an overcast day in August 2013, I stood in the churchyard of St. Peter’s Free Church in Dundee, Scotland, staring at the gravestone of Robert Murray M’Cheyne. As I did, I felt a surge of emotion that transported me 24 years into the past and 3,700 miles west, back to the moment I first met the godly young man whose remains lay buried beneath my feet.
The moment occurred in a makeshift bookstore when I was 23 years old. The church my wife and I had begun attending had just hosted a pastors’ conference and had kindly left the book tables up to give us regular folk a chance to pick through the literary leftovers.
As I was browsing, I came upon a small greenish book titled Robert Murray M’Cheyne. It was authored by a nineteenth-century Scottish pastor I had never heard of (Andrew Bonar) and recorded the life of another nineteenth-century Scottish pastor I had never heard of. I knew next to nothing about Scottish history, let alone Scottish Christian history, so I don’t remember what moved me to buy that book. But I did.
And I am profoundly grateful that I did. Because the godly young man I came to know in the pages of that book shaped me in ways few others have. I even named our first dog after him.
Death to Remember
Robert Murray M’Cheyne was born on May 21, 1813. But like many who lived before the advancements in medicine we now take for granted, M’Cheyne wasn’t long for this world. He died of typhus on March 25, 1843, before reaching his thirtieth birthday.
The day his frail body was laid to rest in St. Peter’s churchyard — the church he had pastored for a mere six and a half years — seven thousand people showed up to honor his memory, grieve their sense of profound loss, and thank God for the grace they received through him. That alone speaks volumes of the kind of man M’Cheyne was.
It is remarkable how God so often uses a death to stop his people in their tracks and force them to think seriously about what life and death truly mean. In fact, that’s precisely what he did with M’Cheyne twelve years earlier.
Life-Changing Death
At age eighteen, M’Cheyne was a bright honor student of classic literature at the University of Edinburgh who fully enjoyed the partying scene of his day. Having been raised attending church, M’Cheyne considered himself a Christian, but he was a Christian of the nineteenth-century Scottish “Bible Belt” variety. He professed faith in Christ, but his heart really loved the worldly delights of his intellectual pursuits and active social life. That is, until he was throttled by a death.
In the summer of 1831, his beloved older brother David succumbed to a deep depression that quickly wore him down in body and soul. His body didn’t survive the ordeal, but by God’s grace, his soul did. In the days before his death, David found profound peace in Jesus’s atoning death for him. His face seemed to shine with an inner radiance.
Robert was gripped both by the grief of his devastating loss and by his brother’s spiritual transformation. And God used this terrible event to bring about Robert’s own spiritual transformation.
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