Peter and Crosby

Does anyone else watch the show Parenthood?

It's a show about a family: four kids, two grandparents, and six grandchildren. It's one of the most realistic portrayals of family life that I've seen on TV. There are awkward moments, there are fights, arguments, failures, struggles: I feel like I'm actually watching real lives rather than a story for TV.

And I think I most relate to Crosby.

Crosby is the youngest son. He's found himself oftentimes in the shadow of his older brother, Adam, the successful business and family man. Crosby can't seem to get his life together and just when he seems to get his feet on some kind of solid ground, he makes a monumental mistake and he's swooped away into instability again. He is so human.

I feel for Crosby, because I think a part of me is Crosby. His latest mistake has him estranged from his fiancee and his son and he ends up in jail after his pent up anger and frustration reach the end. I can't help but cry when his dad comes and pays his bail and Crosby cries in his arms: "I think I really messed up."

Haven't we all, Crosby?

And Peter. I feel a lot like the disciple Peter. The Peter of the Gospel of Luke is a moron, for lack of a better word. He's in the presence of Jesus, witnessing miracles, and he doesn't always seem to get it. He knows that Jesus is the Messiah, but he doesn't really know what that means. He's among the disciples when Jesus foretells his death (three times!) and he doesn't understand or see how that fits into God's plan. He witnesses the Transfiguration and asks if he can pitch two tents for Moses and Elijah (talk about missing the big picture). Jesus tells Peter that he will deny Him three times, to which Peter responds "No, no Jesus. I got this. I'm ready to go with you." Peter denies Jesus three times.

Again and again and again he acts.. human. He's an uneducated, common man.

Lately I've been looking through the wrong lens and all I can see is sin and devastation. God made me into someone who feels and boy, am I tired of that. What I wouldn't give for a mind of someone who doesn't care about anything. How temporarily peaceful that would be. Wars, pornography, divorce, division wear. me. out. Sometimes I feel like I have a big hole in my chest and I literally live Mother Teresa's words when she prays "may God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in." Sometimes I can't stop crying.

Praying gets harder every time through that lens. It gets harder to see where God's been good. It gets harder to see hope. Life isn't a gift anymore, but ways in which we've saddened our Savior.

And it gets painful. I reach the end of myself and I crumble. I'm paralyzed by things that hurt. I'm a mess. I read back through my old journals and see the same things written, the same struggles faced. And like Crosby, I feel like one more mistake, one more event, will have me knocked off my feet again and back at square one. Like Peter, I forget what I've learned, forget what I've seen.

But I've read some things lately that have been encouraging.

My Scripture verse to memorize this week is Micah 6:8- "And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" I could count on ten hands how many times I have heard or read or memorized or sung these lines (Steven Curtis Chapman's 'The Walk' anybody?).

But this time it really hit me. It was brought to my attention from Timothy Keller's book, 'Generous Justice.' Put simply, Keller says, "Micah 6:8 is a summary of how God wants us to live."

I guess what I felt most when I read it this time, for the thousandth and first time, was.. relief. Thankful for what Micah leaves out. The Lord doesn't require us to fix or to take control or to end all the world's sufferings. Sure, what He's asking is loaded and heavy and full of commitment and faithfulness. Doing justice, being compassionate, walking humbly: what does that look like day to day in response to His redemptive acts? There's a lot there, sure.

But aren't you so grateful that God hasn't asked us to be God?

Today was a hard day. I feel stuck. I came home, grabbed a book off my shelf, and soaked in a bath and my feelings for an hour. The book I grabbed was "Living as a Christian" by A.W. Tozer and he wrote this: "If God is God, then our hope is sound. And we Christians can walk around absolutely sure that everything is all right because we have God back of us: His oath, His covenant, His blood to support us in the whelming flood."

This world is ugly. It's not our home. But if God is God (and yes He is!) and a holy God of love, beauty, peace, and righteousness at that, THEN OUR HOPE IS SOUND. Because we know that, because we know that Christ died to save us, we know that everything is all right. The cross is our hope.

And then I've read Luke 24:12 lately. It's Peter's response after Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus saw the empty tomb, heard the two angels, and ran back to tell the eleven disciples. "But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what happened."

There's hope here. It's a hopeful, positive curiosity. This is Peter's turnaround. I imagine that in this moment, everything that Jesus said to Peter when He was still alive came rushing back and Peter realized that this is what Jesus meant. This is what He was all about. This is what He meant when He said He was going to die and be raised again. And I think it might have started to all make sense to him then.

I'm still discouraged. I don't know all the answers. I'm still angry and frustrated and desperate for sin to end. My mind still feels like a ball and I can't find a loose string to unravel it. But there's hope in characters like Peter and Crosby. When we stumble and don't get it and try and try again, we learn our humanity and learn our significance by the power of the cross. Sin loses its power, death loses its sting. We can step into the ring against a big and dark and powerful enemy and realize we've already won the fight because Christ fought and won it for us.