Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 3-052

PETER’S SHADOW

From ‘Sunrise Sunset’ (HarperCollins/Harper San Francisco), Rowland Croucher’s book of daily meditations. Feel free to use or adapt it.

They carried out the sick into the streets… in order that Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he came by. Acts 5:15.

Some cultures have a superstition that if you’re caught in another’s shadow good or evil may happen to you.

Now it’s as easy to believe that miraculous healing can take place as much by the reflection of a shadow as by the touch of a hand. A more significant question may be: how did Peter accrue such awesome power just a few weeks after he was scared to confess to a servant-girl that he was a follower of Jesus?

In these early chapters of Acts, Peter stands out like the Rock of Gibraltar – strong, fearless, rock-like. Now a ‘take charge’ leader, he looks his opponents in the eye and saying, in effect, ‘Here I stand. You cannot intimidate me. I must obey God rather than you.’ How does one get to be like that? Are strong people born or made?

Peter began as a blundering, impetuous, erratic and unstable young man. Promising more than he could deliver, he denied he knew Jesus, failing his Lord and himself miserably. But Jesus reached out to him again (read John 20), forgave him, recommissioned him, helped him to stand – this time not in his own strength but in Christ’s.

Lord, I too will sometimes fail, but help me never, never, never, call myself a ‘failure’! Amen.

Shalom! Rowland Croucher http://jmm.aaa.net.au