Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“When Peter saw it, he addressed the people, ‘You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?’”
NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, April 10, 2021
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
How often do we confuse the message with the messenger? How many of us put our trust in those preaching the gospel rather than in the gospel itself? I’ve been guilty of it. I’ve been a member of churches with fantastic pastors and have looked at them with a kind of awe, as if they had a direct pipeline to God that I could only dream of. Growing up in a wonderful, loving church family, I confused God with the church, so that when the church ultimately (inevitably) failed me (as I saw it), I truly felt betrayed by God herself.
Peter transforms a man’s life in God’s name, and the people who witness it immediately assume Peter is a god. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” shouts Peter, and then turns the situation into an opportunity to turn the conversation back to the real God.
I think it’s useful periodically think about how I really see and experience God, versus those obvious folks in my life I might accidentally give too much power and influence to. Where is God calling me to encounter God in the least obvious people? Where does God’s message transcend those who directly deliver it?
Are there people in my life that I have mistaken for God in some way?
