“Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw how strong the wind was he became frightened; and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught Peter, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
Doubt is what will get us every time. Doubt in your own abilities, doubt in your coworkers, doubt in your relationships. In Peter’s case, he has no reason to doubt. Jesus, the one who he knew was the Son of Man, told him to come on the water and to Him. Nevertheless, he doubts and sinks.
What I like more about this passage is that Peter cries out “Lord! Save me!” and Jesus did. Jesus admonishes his doubting and lack of faith but first, he saved him.
This is something I touch upon often but it was not Peter’s faith that saved him. It was Jesus Christ. Peter did, however, asked the Lord for his salvation.
In the my last post, I mentioned that yesterday’s Gospel was hard because it told us that if we come to Christ early in our lives we receive the same as someone who came to Christ late in life. Hung reminded us, via a comment to that post, that the Christian life is a challenging life.
Part of that challenge is reminding ourselves day in and day out that we must rely on God’s mercy and love. Part of that challenge is fulfulling our universal call to holiness in thought and deed. Above those others, part of that challege is reminding ourselves that we must ask the Lord to save us. God’s mercy and love is a free gift but we must ask for it in order to fully embrace it. His love will extend to us no matter what, I mean come on now, it’s God’s love. In our deepest desires, we are not waiting for God’s love to be extended to us though. We desire to be embraced fully by that love. The only way to do that is to ask for it and to accept it.
We will forget to ask for it and we will forget to accept it. At times, we’ll straight out deny it. We will have our moments of sinking while walking on the waters of our lives, but like Peter, God will save us from ourselves, if we ask Him to.
Leave a Reply