Many Christians are struggling to hold onto the timeless gospel as the world changes around us faster and faster. We might be feeling a bit flustered, a bit overwhelmed, a bit scattered. The letter of 1 Peter is written to Christians during a time when the Roman world was realizing that Christianity and the Roman culture were not in agreement on many things. Peter wrote to Christians scattered around the Roman empire who were struggling to live with this growing tension. Christians face a similar tension today. Will we respond by trying to go back to some golden age of the church in America (that never actually existed!)? Will we rant and complain about how bad things are? Or, like Scripture instructs us through the book of 1 Peter, will we cling to the gospel of Jesus Christ that is our hope as we live scattered in this world and demonstrate this hope through how we live our lives? Being scattered is difficult, but it is an opportunity for us to grow in our understanding of Christ's work in us and, like a farmer scattering seed, it is an opportunity for us to display the gospel to a world in desperate need of hope.