Today’s text opens with praise: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” This acclamation sounds straightforward enough, since it is one we hear or speak week by week, in some form, when we gather to worship. But in today’s reading, it is the prelude to the story Peter is intent on telling. For Peter, this blessing opens us to God’s working in our lives: We are not simply to give some report about what we believe but to live into the mysteries of faith. How do we do this? By practicing resurrection day by day, no matter what comes.

Peter follows his praise with a promise: God desires to give us nothing less than “a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” A new birth? Really? The doubt we might feel lurking in our minds in the face of such a promise is reasonable enough, particularly when we feel overwhelmed by life and unable to find even traces of light amid our darkness. Wherever we are, God calls us to “practice resurrection”—not by verifying an ancient historical report of something that happened at a tomb two thousand years ago but by heeding the invitation to live into incarnation, that “hint half guessed” and “gift half understood.”

Peter’s call to meet suffering with joy might test us or strike us as indefensible. But the story of Easter is that we do not face our burdens alone because Jesus went before us, obedient all the way to death on the cross. (See Philippians 2.) As Peter reminds us, “Although [we] have not seen him, [we can] love him.” What better way do we have of practicing resurrection?