You know, we talk a lot about Peter
and how he fell time and time again.How he sank while he was on the water,
and denied Jesus three times.Bit I think God sees it different.
I think he sees Peter as the one out of the boat.
The one who followed him when others deserted.
And the one who jumped out and swam to shore
because he couldn’t wait to be with Jesus.And when God sees us, sitting in the boat,
laughing at Peter,I rejoice that he accepts us in our weakness,
and in his God-ness calls us to walk on water.
somehow peter always gets the bad rap. he’s the guy who screwed up over and over again. for some reason i’d had enough when i wrote this, and wondered what Christ thought of him.
i didn’t see any of the other 11 guys getting out of the boat. maybe they were more intelligent and realized that people sink in water, especially stormy water.
part of the beauty of peter is that he’s never afraid to do something. even though he looks dumb fairly often, his faith is there. he’s never afraid to stand up for Jesus, and as i picture Christ, i see him smiling at peter.
i think we need to be more like peter. all too often, we’re afraid of looking like fools. it reminds me of a west wing clip where C.J. is talking to Bartlet and she says this:
Sir, I think you should do the classroom either way. We have at our disposal a captive audience of school children. Some of them don’t go to the blackboard or raise their hands because they think they’re going to be wrong. I think you should say to these kids, ‘You think you get it wrong sometimes, you should come down here and see how the big boys do it.’ I think you should tell them that you haven’t given up hope, and that it may turn up, but in the mean time you want NASA to put its best people in a room and you want them to start building Galileo Six. Some of them will laugh and some of them won’t care, but for some, they might honestly see that it’s about going to the blackboard and raising your hand. And that’s the broader theme.
may we be people who go to the blackboard and raise our hands – not afraid of getting out of the boat.