“Everybody has a box,” Charlie says. “They have some place where they keep things.” Charlie should know. He’s a licensed safecracker. Sometimes when he opens a safe, it’s filled with valuables. More often than not it’s empty. “You work so hard to get something open,” he observes, “but sometimes you crack it and there’s nothing inside.”

As followers of Jesus, we have a box, too, but it’s not empty. Inside is our future inheritance in God’s kingdom — a treasure of surpassing value. Peter says this treasure is kept in heaven for us, probably remembering how Jesus warned his friends against putting their hope in things that “moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19).

It’s not just the treasure God keeps safe, either. We, too, the treasure’s inheritors, are being “shielded by God’s power until the coming of his salvation.”

“That’s very nice,” you say, “but I’ve got problems today, here and now.” Listen! That’s exactly the point. Peter was writing to people waiting for the Roman emperor’s thugs to knock on their door and drag them out to be executed for believing in Christ. They had terrible problems!

It is not the difficulties of today or tomorrow that will be the end of our story. The day is coming when kept by the power of God, we will open the box and receive the inheritance that is waiting for us. That’s real hope and real life. It’s a true treasure — now and forever!

I thank you, Jesus, for protecting me and safely keeping my inheritance with you. I will wait patiently for your great salvation. I pray that I can serve you fully and well in your strength, today and forever. Amen.

Go Deeper — Print out or draw a treasure chest. Write on the back in your own words what inheritance lies inside, along with I Peter 1:4-5. Whenever problems crowd your mind, pull it out and thank God that an eternal inheritance awaits you and that you are shielded by His power in the meantime.



Tags: The Letters of Peter 1 Peter 1
Photo Credit: Adi Constantin