Today's Word
"You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
Matthew 16:18
Today's Reflection
Two men. One a fisherman from Galilee who denied Christ three times before a charcoal fire. The other a Pharisee from Tarsus who held the coats of men stoning Christians to death in the street. These are the men on whom the Church is built.
This should embarrass any theology of self-sufficiency.
Peter failed dramatically and was restored. Paul persecuted the Church and was turned inside out on a road to Damascus. Neither earned their place. Both were chosen anyway, shaped by grace into something they could not have become on their own, and then sent out to turn the world upside down.
The Church was never meant to be a gathering of the already-sorted. It is, and has always been, a community of people being made new. Peter and Paul are not distant heroes. They are the pattern. God takes what is broken and uses it. God takes what is opposed and makes it a voice for the Gospel.
You do not have to be ready. You have to be willing.
Today's Prayer
God of Peter and Paul,
thank you that you do not wait for us to be worthy.
Take whatever failures and false starts we bring today
and make them the beginning of something good.
Give us their courage, without needing their dramatic conversion. Amen.
Today's Call
Think of someone who seems an unlikely candidate for faith: maybe even yourself.
Pray for them today by name.
God has a track record with unlikely candidates.