In the year I turned 19 I became convicted of my need to be baptized as an outward symbol of my faith in Jesus Christ. Two of my friends had also expressed the same desire and the date was set for Easter Sunday of that year. There was one significant hurdle I had to get over though.

My parents.

I did not come from a Christian family and even though my parents claimed allegiance to a particular denomination, they were not church attenders, nor did they practice their professed “faith.” I kept putting off the conversation, but Easter was fast approaching and so the dreaded moment came.

My parents’ response was as I expected. There was a lot of anger, and I was told I was “a disgrace to the family” and that I “had let them down.”

The pressure was intense, and I am deeply regretful to say that I caved into it. In the week leading up to Easter I had a dose of the flu, and this became my excuse to stay home from church that day, thus allowing me to avoid the embarrassment of saying to my church friends I wouldn’t be baptized as well as escape the wrath of my parents.

The trouble is, I know to this day I wasn’t sick enough to stay home from church – it simply became a convenient excuse to not obey Jesus.

So, when I read Peter’s denial of Jesus – “I do not know the man” – there is a part of me that knows something of the pain he must have felt as he uttered those words. But it also gives me hope because Jesus didn’t write Peter off. There will come a day in the not-too-distant future when Peter – regretful and deeply repentant – will be restored by His Master.

Jesus didn’t write me off either – I’m here all these years later, telling you, my story.

Jesus hasn’t written you off either.

Today’s Bible reading: Mark 14:66-72