To Peter: A Letter

I see you. Standing in the darkness of your betrayal. Weeping at what you have done. You did what you vowed never to do. Never did you think you were capable of this. You have failed. You are at the utter end.

You have denied the One Thing that drove you, the thing you said you would give your life for. Turns out your life is more precious to you than you thought. More precious than that One Thing. So precious that you would turn away from what you love most.

Look up. Look at me. I see you. I know you. Remember? I knew you would be sifted and exposed. I prayed that your faith would not fail.

But your faith was in yourself. And this faith must always fail in the end. The faith I have prayed for is the faith that rises from this brokenness.

You have served Me so fervently, so passionately. And each day you have become more satisfied with yourself. Zealot. Servant. Disciple. You truly think you have given all.

But who did you do it for? And why?

Now that you have betrayed everything you thought you were, do you see? Do you understand that it was all for you all along? 

Look at Me. You have denied Me. Rejected Me. And now you think that all is lost. But your life is now beginning, beloved. I am looking at you. And this way that I go? It is for you. I came for you. I have something for you that is far better than anything you could do for yourself. And now you can see it.

Walk in the bitterness of your shame. Step into the fear. Follow your failure straight to the cross and watch my blood flow down.

For you.

This is where faith begins, beloved. When you weep the bitter tears of death, the death that I died. For you. When you run to the tomb and find it empty, when you finger the burial cloth that could not hold back my love. When you touch my hands and my feet, when you see the love that is more than enough for your shame. When you remember how you stretched out your hand and I pulled you from the waves, how I calmed the storm, fed the hungry, made the blind see, raised the dead. They are all you, beloved. I came for you.

 This is the faith that will not fail. The faith that knows your desperate need of me. 

You could not be transformed without first being broken. But now, beloved, now you will really know Me and not just your idea of Me. And now I will strengthen you, and you will strengthen your brothers and sisters.

Don’t you know that when you reject Me, I always turn toward you? Do you not see that I am looking at you, and My look is all love?

Look at Me, and know My love, and know that you can never lose it. All is grace.

What really matters this Lent

Maybe we are too overwhelmed with life. Or too comfortable. Or too distracted. Or too lazy.

Or maybe we’re too mad. Too full of despair. Too hopeless and afraid.

Maybe we don’t seek God because we don’t need him enough. Or maybe we need him too much, and it doesn’t seem like he is there or even really cares.

Where is God when evil men cut off the heads of his followers and shout their message of hate? Where is God when disease ravages a continent already poor and desperate? Where is he when babies die and marriages fall apart and bodies fail and people everywhere just suffer?

Where are you, God?

We need you, God.

I confess I do not understand. I feel angry sometimes—a lot—and scared and desperate.

But maybe not desperate enough.

Maybe it’s easier to ignore the questions and pain, to just duck down with my kids and my stuff and be comfortable. Or maybe I just want to stay mad. Either way, I avoid God. I don’t talk to him at all, or I hurl accusations like the fears that assault me.

But what if we just grabbed hold and clung on for dear life?

 Like Jacob wrestling all night with a God he didn’t understand. 

Like Daniel on his face, mourning for his nation and crying out to God for three full weeks. 

Like David crouching in caves, lifting words instead of weapons, sometimes in praise, but just as often in bewildered questioning.

They took hold of God and begged for answers. And God didn’t run from such confrontation. He came. He always comes. We’re the ones running away.

Daniel was visited by an angel who revealed to him a world we cannot imagine. The angel couldn’t even get to Daniel for 21 days because the battle was so intense. Forces we cannot see are raging and fighting over us. US. God’s beloved children.

A war storms around us while we play on our smartphones. Our fellow believers are being slaughtered while we flip through channels.  People in our own communities are captives to fear, need, and loneliness. And we too are full of anger and fear, and maybe we want to change, maybe we want to do something, but don’t know what to do.

I don’t know what to do. How to fix this mess. How I fit. How it even matters that I care.

But I’m convinced he’s here, and he will hear. We can’t see him because we aren’t really looking.

It’s time to fall on our faces before God. It’s time to take all this anger and all these questions and give them to him, grab hold of him and ask him to come. It’s time to stop waiting for answers and start looking for answers. Being the answers.

He won’t run from our questions. He won’t shy away from our pleas for him to come. He won’t ignore our crying out. But it starts here. With us. It begins with us moving toward him, pouring out our need for him, repenting, mourning, and asking for him to come.

Do we know what it means to truly seek him? Do we really want him to come? Are we ready for what that means, for what he will ask us to do? Because we are his hands and feet. We are his voice. Do we really want to be the answer to the questions?