Dear Jesus,
In this Lenten season, I know how much I must count on your grace. Like the apostle Peter after your arrest, I simply “follow from a distance.” Like the apostle Peter in the courtyard, I worry about what people are thinking of me. Like the apostle Peter, despite my claims to follow you to the death, I am not willing even to show up at the cross. I am convicted to know that when your love for me is so unwavering and sacrificial, my love for you is shallow and fickle. Jesus, forgive me.
What is most amazing, though, is that you even care about my petty shortfalls, my ongoing and regular denials of your sovereignty in my life. I am just one of the billions. “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established…” (Psalm 8) how amazing it is that you care about my sin, that you love me enough to reach out in compassion and forgiveness. What I sense most of all is not that I am searching for you, but that you are pursuing me! Like the hound of heaven, you chase me “down the nights and down the days, …down the arches of the years… down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind, and in the midst of tears…” (The Hound of Heaven, Frances Thompson). You care for me enough to call for me from the shoreline, as you did the apostle Peter, to recommission me to a life of purpose. I stand in awe of your love.
Thank you does not seem enough. Amen.