Peter: What Can We Learn From Peter's Life?Sample

"Could You Not Watch With Me One Hour?"

Peter was chosen along with James and John, the sons of Zebedee, to accompany Jesus as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus wanted His closest disciples near Him as He agonized and prayed over the suffering He was about to endure. He asked them to stay awake and keep vigil nearby, supporting Him with their presence as He privately cried out to His Father.

Peter was the one Jesus admonished when He found them sleeping. Jesus corrected him again later when he pulled out a sword during Jesus’s arrest and cut off a man’s ear (John 18:10). Both situations showed that Peter didn’t understand the full nature of what was going on, despite Jesus’s words as recently as the meal they had just shared. Jesus had said that someone would betray Him, that the disciples would all fall away from Him that very night, that Peter would deny Him before the next morning. He had spoken of His blood being poured out and of being raised from the dead. And in the months leading to this moment, Jesus had taught His disciples that He would be killed and raised again on the third day. But on the verge of those very events, Peter was sleeping along with James and John. When the crowd seized Jesus, Peter thought that a sword might stop thousands of years of God’s plan about to unfold.

Peter was weak in many ways. He spoke and acted before thinking or understanding. He made bold statements that he couldn’t always follow through on with his actions. Peter showed a brief moment of courage when he followed Jesus and His accusers into the courtyard of the high priest, but as we will soon see, that courage did not last. Yet this was the man whom Jesus chose as a key part of His plan to spread the Good News around the world. This was the man who would eventually understand the purposes of God so clearly that he would lead thousands to Jesus. Though he was about to experience his deepest failure, Peter was also not far off from becoming the man Jesus always knew he could be.

Reflection:

How do you see yourself reflected in Peter’s actions in today’s passage?

How do Jesus’s correcting words to Peter in verses 40-41 and 52-54 speak to you today?