“Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.” (1 Peter 1:13)

I realized that I tend to get focused on the first part of this verse and almost miss the big statement being made in the second part. I think it’s because of the word sober, and the obvious tie to its antonym of drunkenness. There are so many analogies and references one can draw with this simple metaphor, contrasting the overindulgence of alcohol with the instruction to remain alert, that it dominates the verse. But looking past this opening statement of keeping our minds fully alert, we come to a second instruction of equal importance. “Set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.” It’s an instruction that leads to a bigger question; what do you put your hope in? Pastor Tanner tackled this topic not too long ago during his last sermon series. As Christians, (and just as Peter indicates in today’s verse) our hope should only be in Christ Jesus. And I’m sure we would all raise our right hand in the court of law to claim this as truth. But let’s be honest, this is a difficult thing to live out. With all the distractions of the world, with all the incentives that the world can offer, saying that our hope is purely on the coming of our Lord Jesus can be challenging. We hope for so many things. Some trivial, like I hope for good weather while on vacation. Or I hope there’s no traffic tomorrow on my way to work. Other hopes can be more serious, like I hope I have enough saved for retirement. But we can address this challenge by bringing both parts of Peter’s verse together. We need to stay alert by putting our focus on the things that matter – Jesus. And when we do, we will experience the joy of putting our hope in Christ Jesus too.