Good Friday...Peter denies the Lord

Its very late into the night,perhaps just 2-3 hours for dawn and a few hours since the Lord was whisked away by the Roman police. No one knows clearly where they have taken Him.There is this eerie tension and a weird sense of anticipation in the air. Most of the apostles have dispersed  and are probably on the run but Peter, our impetuous friend, is still lurking around. He seems to have found a trail of the party which took the Lord away. He makes his way to the courts where they have taken him to. Peter gets a glimpse of the Lord. There are clear signs that he has been tortured and brutalised by Roman soldiers  and  is barely the man who supped with them the previous night. He soon finds out the whole deal. The Lord has indeed been arrested and is going to be tried on charges of blasphemy.

It suddenly dawns on him that the 'final' battle, the coup d'etat, which he was thinking about, the one in which the Lord's army (of his imagination) was to come and take control of Jerusalem, does not seem to be starting anytime soon. Peter is a really scared man now. He fears for his life knowing very well that now that the Man has been arrested, the romans will soon set out for all His disciples. There is no plan B either, there never was. Everything centered around Jesus and now that Hie has been neutralised (or so it seems to him ) everything is falling apart. In his fear, he  ends up denying Jesus to those who recognised him  and refuses to acknowledge his relationship with Jesus, in fact denies the fact that he knows Jesus at all ..not once but three times and then ............................

The Lord looks up at Peter and gives him that deep gaze of love most intense. Peter realises how fickle he has been. He weeps bitterly and  is filled with remorse over his own misdoing.

Just like most of the crowds in and around Jerusalem that day, just like Peter that  night , I have denied Jesus so many times. Times where I have lapped up all the accolades and compliments on my accomplishments, times when I have not been expressly grateful enough for all the mercies he has shown me, the countless favours that I have received from Him all my life, I attributed to plain  simple luck or worse on my own prowess...Times when I had an opportunity to glorify Him infront  of others but chose not to as it is 'oh so old fashioned to praise Jesus'.....fearing remarks like 'oh, why do these guys have to bring Jesus in everything' .

That night Peter feared for his life but such a risk has never come up in my life and yet I have disowned Him with scary regularity.....So much for my discipleship. And yet, even now He gazes at me with that unfailing, unflinching and unconditional love. He never stops gazing, He never stops loving...