Michael Kelley's Blog, page 24

What Ducks Eat, and the Pride of Easy Education

I remember several years ago my daughter and I driving through a parking lot that came up beside a small pond and finding that some ducks had congregated by that pond. So we stopped; these ducks were obviously used to the traffic; they expected some kind of treat coming from the car rather than running away back to their water.

That’s when my daughter and I got into a discussion about what exactly a duck eats. We had seen them eat bread, but she also pointed out that ducks will dip their beaks into the water presumably to eat something. But what? Fish? Bugs? Just a drink of water? So we did what anyone would do when they have a question in our day and time: We pulled out my phone and typed in the question, and in two seconds we had the answer.

We live in this age of easy education. Never before has more information been more available to us. You can count on the fact that virtually anything you’ve been curious about, someone else has already been curious about, and has recorded the answer somewhere in cyberspace. It’s a pretty amazing thing when you think about it. And yet the breadth and depth of these facts and figures of all shapes and kinds brings with it a question:

To what end?

Back to the example of the ducks. Now we know what ducks eat, but to what end? We don’t have ducks. We don’t plan on raising ducks. We rarely encounter ducks. So to what end do we now know what ducks eat? This is the danger that we run into because with the wealth of information comes the bloated ego associated with it. What I mean is that because we don’t have ducks, but now that we know what ducks eat, the only real application point for that piece of information is our own pride.

We get to now answer a question on a TV quiz show, or we get to show how much we know in a conversation that for some reason centers around ducks. We get to be the ones who know the answer that others do not, and therefore we get to be the ones who look like duck experts although we have never raised a single water foul. Knowledge without application leads to pride:

“Knowledge inflates with pride, but love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1).

In the case of the Corinthians, some considered themselves enlightened with knowledge which enabled them to freely eat certain kinds of food which others considered unclean. It was a data point which led to pride, and the pride led to division. But Paul had a better way – beware the kind of knowledge which inflates the ego so you can float above the crowd. Love is the needle that pops the balloon of pride and sinks us back down to earth.

What an important message for us today as people who have more access to more knowledge than any other point in human history. In microseconds, we can become virtual experts on any number of subjects. But as the old saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. We certainly have the power of knowledge; but do we have the corresponding responsibility?

We do not.

We, as Christians, have a better way, and the manner in which we access that better way often comes through asking that simple question:

“To what end?”

Is the end my own ego? My pride of knowledge? Or is it something else? How does knowing this thing, whatever it is, help me to love God and love my neighbor? How does it help me know how to carry my cross and follow Jesus? The easy education we have at our fingertips is not just a chance to know; it is a chance to live.

The 4 Roles a Parent Plays as their Kids Get Older

For my wife and I, this past year has represented an acceleration in time. It’s not that time has gone by any faster, of course; but rather that it’s felt that way. This was the year, I think, when both of us realized at separate times the true age of our children.

I know that sounds silly, because how can you not recognize how hold your kids are? After all, they have a birthday every year. You celebrate it. You know it. And you know absolutely with your mind how old each of them are. At the same time, though, it’s possible that as a parent you can just keep parenting your children the same way you did when they were younger.

By way of illustration, consider this: You would not keep feeding your kids baby food when they are 12 and 13 years old, right? Of course not. And yet many of us never consciously adapt and grow in our parenting at the same pace as our children age. We find ourselves stuck in the same parenting dynamic we were when they were young because that’s what we know. It’s what we’re comfortable with. And it worked reasonably well then.

One of the challenges of parenting, then, is growing with your children. To that end, we have found it helpful to think about the different stages of parenting like the following. Keep in mind, though, that I’m not a therapist. I’m not an educational expert. I’m a dad – just a regular, old dad trying to figure this thing out one day at a time. Nevertheless, though, thinking in these categories might be helpful to you as well:

1. Protector

This is where everyone starts. When you first have children, your basic role as a parent is just to keep them from harm. You control every part of their lives with the end of making sure they are safe, healthy, and growing, from what they eat, to what they watch, to what they do, to the people they interact with. You, as a parent, are their protector. And when you think of it like that, it gives you a lot of freedom.

That means you don’t have to necessarily concern yourself with teaching them everything in the world. It’s not wrong, of course, to try and help them learn – we should do that. But our primary role is that of protector above all else.

2. Teacher

But then things change. It’s not that we stop protecting our children; we certainly still do. And we certainly still have a good deal of control over them. But our mindset at some point has to shift from being primarily concerned with protecting them, to being primarily concerned about teaching them. But the teaching here is really still from a directive standpoint. We are teaching them good and bad, right and wrong, this way and that. In other words, our teaching is basically about the facts of the world and life as we know it.

When we are teaching, we are laying the groundwork for what comes after. We are helping set a foundation for truth; we are forming a worldview into our children. We are reading them the Bible, talking to them about what it means, and helping them understand who God is and their need of grace.

3. Coach

But then things change again, and this is the stage we are in with two of our kids right now. We are moving from being the teacher who has all the answers and dispenses information to the students to being the coach. The coach is still the one who is designing the game plan, but no longer the one who actually implements and executes is. In this stage, we are no longer teaching our children what to think; we are showing them how to think for themselves.

Along with that transition comes a greater degree of freedom. Teenagers need to be able to have real conversations for themselves with their teachers, with their parents, and with their peers. The coach doesn’t solve the problems on behalf of their kids any more; rather, they are standing on the sidelines helping the children know how to solve problems for themselves.

4. Cheerleader

And then things change again. This is rapidly moving toward us. It’s the moment when we move from being coach to just being the cheerleader. This is when our children are fully autonomous, making decisions on their own. It’s when they are deciding what to do with their time, their money, their talents – their everything. And you hope and pray that by the time they get to this point you’ve done what you could to protect them, to teach and direct them, then to coach them so they are ready and equipped to make decisions on their own.

Now the reason thinking in these categories has been helpful to us is because it’s a hard transition to move from one stage to another. It’s been helpful at times for my wife and I to remind each other that, at least for a couple of kids, we aren’t meant to teach them as much as coach them. It helps us, in other words, to back off a little bit. Not completely, but still to give our children the freedom to operate more in the world.

Kids grow. And as they do, it seems like the wise thing for parents to do is grow alongside them. By God’s grace, then, we can grow together.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. Why We Need to Talk About Obedience

Yes, we do. Weirdly, it has become a little unfashionable to do so, as if talking about grace is incompatible with obedience. It’s not.

2. The Whale and the Cow

Here’s a little piece of the Jonah story I’d never thought of.

3. Slowly Going Blind

Something to be careful of – one of the ways we are robbed of wonder and beauty and yes, love, is by seeing it over and over again.

4. Aragorn V. Sauron Unreleased Scene

This was a pretty neat compilation of unreleased footage and storyboards of what an alternate ending might have looked like.

Your Work is More Than a Means to an End

My first job was pretty typical: I mowed the grass all summer for a guy in my town with a lawn care business. It wasn’t a great decision for a kid who suffered from allergies, but it did put a little money in my pocket for a while. At least I had something to use to buy Kleenexes.

That’s pretty much what that first job was – it was a means to an end. The means was pushing a lawn mower for 8 hours a day; the end was money. I felt no great calling to agricultural engineering; nor did I sense the presence of the extraordinary in the weed eater string. I just showed up, day after day, doing the same thing as I did the previous day, and then got a check on Friday. For most of us, that’s the same way we still approach work.

Work is a means to an end.

Work is something that’s necessary, but not something particularly desirable. There are indeed the 2% of people out there who are doing what they love and spring out of bed every morning like they’ve been laying on a spring. God bless them. The rest of us, at least part of the time, have to take a deep breath over a cup of morning coffee to go back and do the same thing today that we did yesterday. For the rest of us, we tend to work not as an end in itself, but to get to do something else.

We work to go on vacation. We work for the weekend. We work so that someday we don’t have to work anymore. In other words, we work in order to be at leisure. We might be tempted to think the solution to work dissatisfaction is to get a new job. To be fair, that might indeed be what needs to happen. But if that’s your perspective now, in the job you’re currently in, chances are at some point in the future you’ll have that perspective again.

God didn’t create work to bore us. To Him, work is sacred, whether that work is emptying trash or preaching a sermon. A.W. Tozer reminded us once that “it is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular. It is why he does it.” The sacredness of the opportunity is not about the work itself, but about our perspective of why we work at all.

It is possible, as C.S. Lewis said, to have “the sense of divine vision restored to man’s daily work.” What we might need instead of a change in vocation is a change in perspective, not just about our particular job, but about the nature of work in general.

Work is a sacred opportunity given to us by and for God, just as it was given to Adam on the very first day human beings walked on the earth. The day in question is recorded for us in Genesis 2. Think back to those quiet days of peace and harmony as God created the garden of Eden:

These are the records of the heavens and the earth, concerning their creation at the time that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. No shrub of the field had yet grown on the land, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not made it rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground (Genesis 2:4-5).

These were early days. Days before it rained. Days before shrubs and plants grew. But even in those early days, God was thinking about work. He was going to create man, according to verse 5, with the specific intent that he would work the ground. The record continues in verse 15: “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and watch over it.”

The pictures in children’s Bibles of those early days, complete with carefully placed plant life over certain parts of the humans, might cause us to think that life in the garden for Adam and Eve was some kind of pre-sin picnic. We imagine the first humans spending their days lounging under shade trees, eating berries off bushes, and naming an animal here and there. That’s not what this text leads us to believe.

What we have here instead is a picture of God creating and positioning His children and then immediately giving them a job. Just as God had been busy working, so would the man, created in God’s image, have work ingrained in his DNA. That’s right, friends – much as we might view our jobs as only the means to the end for our leisure, we were created to work. But we were created to work with the right perspective.

The Hebrew word translated as “placed” literally means “caused to rest.” But that’s a problem because it seems, at least on the surface, to contradict God’s command to man. How could the man be caused to rest and then given a job? The reason we fail to see this reveals just how misshapen our view of work has become.

For Adam, work was not opposed to rest. It was not a necessary evil only done to earn money and play on the weekend. Instead, work was a blessing, born out of the sense of rest he had through his relationship with God. How, then, do we regain that sense of rest?

It’s only through the gospel. The gospel that tells us we are accepted. Valuable. Made right. Have nothing left to prove. And this message that changes us at the heart level works itself out into every arena if our lives – including our work. Because of the gospel, we know that whatever we do in whatever vocation we find ourselves in, we are fully accepted on the merit and righteousness of Jesus alone. The gospel frees us from the burden of performance and self-justification and allows us to regain the sacred perspective of work. We no longer work primarily in order to establish or maintain our sense of identity; that’s been taken care of in Christ. We know who we are, regardless of what our business cards say. We are the blood-bought and beloved children of God now and forevermore. Because we are, we can begin to regain the perspective of seeing work as a blessing rather than a curse.

We Are All Defense Attorneys at Heart

In the judicial system of the United States, one of the most important principles is that a person is presumed to be innocent, until proven guilty. That means the burden of proof is on the prosecutor, not the defense attorney. So while the prosecutor must present enough evidence to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, the guilt of the accused, the defense attorney’s job is different.

As the defense attorney defends a client, they don’t have to prove that person’s innocence; they only have to produce enough evidence or alternative explanations to provide that reasonable doubt. One way that helps me understand the difference is that the prosecution is building a case as someone builds a house. That case is meant to be built as stably and air tight as possible. The defense attorney is trying to put some space between the bricks of that structure or at least to show that the bricks of the prosecution’s case are not actually stable at all.

Chip away, chip away, chip away, until the client is shown NOT to necessarily be innocent, but declared NOT GUILTY.

We should all be comfortable with this concept, not only because it’s an important piece of the justice system, but also because we are all defense attorneys at heart.

As such, we aren’t necessarily concerned with our innocence; we only want to dispel the notion of our guilt. But Jesus is familiar with people like us:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:25-29).

Here was a man who, from the outset, wasn’t really interested in the answer to his question. He was not seeking knowledge or spiritual insight – quite the opposite. Proud of his own knowledge and his clever question, he wanted to test Jesus. But Jesus turns the question back on him, and the one who was trying to trap Jesus was suddenly in danger of being trapped himself.

His answer was right – that he must love God and love his neighbor with his whole being, and yet he perhaps sensed that he was guilty by his own standard. And that coming guilt was too much for him, and so he asked for qualification. Like the defense attorney, he tried to chip away at the bricks of the case that was built against him, hoping to find a reasonable doubt. He wanted to find enough wiggle room, not so that he would be innocent, but at least so that he might avoid outright guilt.

Don’t we all do that? Isn’t that a familiar posture for us? Time and time again, we know the good we ought to do, and yet we fall short. But instead of owning the shortcoming, we take the posture of the defense attorney. We look for all the nooks and crannies into which we might escape, trying any way we can to point out the intricacies and special circumstances that will hep us escape.

Sometimes we succeed. Or at least we think we do. We walk from conviction, feeling as though we have justified our greed or selfishness or anger or bitterness. And yet there is always a reckoning to come, because we are all guilty. Case closed.

Oh, but there is a simpler way. Painful, perhaps – but so much simpler. We can avoid all the wrangling, all the excuses, all the self-justification… and just agree with the Lord. We can acknowledge what we both know to be true, and in so doing, be fully confident of the grace that awaits us. This is the fuel for our repentance, not just once, but every day – we can know that there is yet more grace for us.

The One Place Where All Leadership Principles Fall Apart

In the movie We Were Soldiers, Mel Gibson plays the role of U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore. Before his platoon leaves for the battlefield in Vietnam, Moore delivers a speech in which he says this:

Let us understand the situation. We are going into battle against a tough and determined enemy. I can’t promise you that I will bring you all home alive. But this I swear – before you and before Almighty God – that when we go into battle, I will be the first to set foot on the field, and I will be the last to step off. And I will leave no one behind.

It’s an amazing picture of leadership, and also descriptive of the one place where all leadership principles fall apart. A leader, whether in the home, in the church, in the office, or in the community, can deliver stirring speeches, provide detailed plans, articulate strategic goals, and yet have their leadership fall apart if this principle is violated:

It’s impossible to follow a leader who is distant.

Long before Hal Moore embodied this and certainly before the principle was recorded in book form or dramatized in film, Jesus showed us the same philosophy. Consider if you would the parting words of the Son of God before He ascended into heaven, the words we now call the Great Commission:

“All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:18-20).

There is a definite progression in these verses, one that we can learn form in all the spheres God has charged us to lead. The progression begins with authority. This is especially important because, as the prior verses reveal, not everyone was fully on board with the risen Savior:

“When they saw him, they worshiped, but some doubted” (Matt. 28:17).

Despite His predictions, despite the sight of the crucifixion, despite the testimonies of resurrection, and now despite seeing the physical Jesus standing alive before them, there were still some who weren’t too sure. So Jesus began by stating the divine authority that had been given to Him. As the conquering Savior, He was not making a suggestion; He was giving a command with all the authority of heaven and earth behind Him.

From His authority, Jesus moved to assignment. Because He had this authority, He was fully within His rights to make an assignment to His followers. And this is where this statement starts to cross paths with our own experience of leadership.

We, too, have been given a measure of authority. In the home, in the business, in the community, we have been given various levels of authority to lead. And because we are, we must be willing to give assignments to others. This is not something we should feel bad about, but it is something that should make us very humble and cautious, because this is where authority often goes bad. For when we are given a measure of authority, it is our tendency to abuse that authority for our own ends, and that abuse comes out in the nature and type of assignments we make.

But not with Jesus. He began with His authority. Then He gave assignments. Now if our authority goes bad, the next step in that progression is absence. We make assignments and then simply walk away, leaving people to figure it out on their own without any real support, service, or investment from us. We, after all, are the ones with authority, and therefore we can do what we want. But the progression Jesus followed was not authority, assignment, and absence.

Instead, Jesus’ progression is authority, assignment, and presence.

“And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Jesus was not abandoning them in their assignment. Rather, He was promising that He would be the first one on the field and the last one off. His presence would go with them.

If we want to lead in an incarnational way, if we want to learn from Jesus, then we must do the same. We must be the leaders who serve with those being led. We must be the leaders who empathize with those under our care. We must be the leaders who are down in the mud not up in the tower. We must know those we lead deeply – and we must love them. We must show the reality of that love through the most basic means possible – with our presence.

Strategy is great. Vision is awesome. Directives are powerful. But nothing replaces presence.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. Every Sunday is Easter

Jesus is just as alive this week as He was a couple of weeks ago. So celebrate that fact again. And again.

2. The Bible is Literature. It’s Also Your Boss.

Let us make sure that we understand the writing of the Bible, but let us make doubly sure we are obedient to it.

3. The Cosmos Keeps Preaching

This is a wonderful – and complex – article from one who worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Center for 40 years.

4. Michael J. Fox Documentary

Wow. Even this trailer was very nostalgic, sad, and hopeful to watch.

The 2 Sets of Circumstances that Make Us Pray Desperately

Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 

Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Mark 10:46-48).

It’s a simple prayer. One of the simplest in the whole Bible, and yet we shouldn’t make the mistake of equating its simplicity with its fervency. A lifetime of pain and hardship is crammed into these few words. There are no flowery phrases and beautiful appeals here – only urgency. Desperation. Need.

And don’t we know what that feels like? Surely we do – to be in the midst of a situation when all the words have run out; when emotions are stretched to their limit; when we find ourselves acutely aware of our need; and when the only prayer we can squeak is something like what Bartimaeus kept disruptively repeating here:

“Help me.”

While the circumstances that prompt desperate prayers like that are varied, they all have a couple of characteristics in common, namely:

We realize that we cannot do or be or feel what a situation demands on our own, and…We need someone outside of ourselves to come to our aid.

In other words, prayers like these are born when we see, in combination, the situation confronting us and our own weakness in the midst of it. Again, the circumstances that bring about these realizations are many and varied, but perhaps we could group those circumstances into two main categories. The first one won’t surprise you, but perhaps the second one will:

1. Category 1: When the circumstances are too big.

This is the unsurprising category. Sometimes the circumstances in front of us are just too big. They might be too big for our emotions, as when someone close to us suddenly gets sick. Or they might be too big for our abilities, as when we are thrust into a leadership position with too many details and what feels like an overwhelming amount of responsibility.

In any case, those circumstances make us suddenly realize that we aren’t as smart or clever or tough or resilient or powerful as we think we are. Funny thing about those circumstances though – they only expose the truth that’s already there. We can trick ourselves into thinking that we are all those things – smart or clever or tough or resilient or powerful enough. And we can live a long time under that delusion until the atom bomb of circumstance shakes us out of it. When it does, we find ourselves in that posture of desperation, and so we pray, at the end of our ropes: “Lord, help me!”

2. Category 2: When the circumstances are too small.

This is the more surprising category. It’s not when the circumstances are too big and we suddenly realize that we are too small; it’s when the circumstances are small and we suddenly realize that we aren’t that big after all. 

Let’s say that you have been the president of your homeowner’s association, not just once, but for a string of several years. And in your tenure, the neighborhood has done some good things, but then the year comes when you lose the election. You still want to serve your neighbors, but you have been relegated to some secondary committee, and though you know it shouldn’t matter as much as it does, you miss being in charge. You feel bigger than the duties you’ve been assigned. Better. More equipped than what you’re being asked to do.

This is another set of circumstances when we feel a sense of desperation – it’s when we aren’t sure we can do what needs to be done because it feels beneath us. The first category is a threat to comfort and safety; the second category is a threat to our egos. And in either case, we find ourselves in need of the Lord’s help. So we pray again:

“Lord, help me.”

The good news is that the Lord stands ready in both sets of circumstances. He is ready to help us when we are feeling too small or when we are feeling too big. But let’s also recognize this: The help He offers is not to get us out of either situation. It’s not necessarily to fix our troubling circumstances, nor is it to elevate us out of our current situation. It is rather the form us into the image of Jesus using both circumstances. It’s to fashion the kind of humility, dependence, and faith that brings Him glory. To that end, we know He will help us. Always.

3 Words That Can Change Your Life

Philip had met Jesus. Jesus had beckoned to him with two simple words: “Follow Me!” 

No explanations. No promises of miracles. No set expectations. Just that invitation. Or was it a command? Maybe—somehow—both. Philip went and found Nathanael and told him about Jesus, making extraordinary claims about this man’s identity:  

“We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and the prophets also wrote about—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (John 1:45). 

Nathanael was dubious: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  

Philip followed the example of Jesus. He didn’t offer any apologetic proofs. He failed to do much convincing. He didn’t produce any evidence. He responded to Nathanael’s doubts with three words—one more than Jesus gave to him:  

“Come and see.” 

What do those words mean?

A command? An invitation? Or maybe a dare? That seems more like it. 

“I don’t have to convince you, Nathanael. I dare you to come and see for yourself. Check it out.” 

It might seem irresponsible at first, like Philip had an obligation to something more. He had the responsibility to offer that convincing proof which backed up his outlandish claims. But for some reason, he felt no need. Now maybe it was because he didn’t have any of those proofs. Or the evidence. Or the intelligence to make a rational argument. Or maybe it was because Philip knew that his job wasn’t to do the convincing. His job was to make the dare. 

“Come and see.”  

It’s an outrageously confident statement. Like someone who has just tried chocolate ice cream for the first time trying to get someone to take a bite. It’s the claim of one who is radically sure of the goodness of what he’s presenting and allows it to speak for itself. 

Just take a bite. Just savor it. Come and see. 

This is the statement of those who know the power of the gospel for salvation. It’s not, “Let me convince you.” Nor is it, “Let me explain to you how it works.” It’s “Come and see.” 

It’s the claim of a man who was destined to see a supposed dead man walk into a locked room. Of a man who would preach the gospel to the unclean and outrun an Ethiopian’s chariot. Of one who would preach as far and wide as southeast Asia. And his evangelistic fervor started with these simple words: 

“Come and see.” 

Do we believe that? Do we believe in the power of the gospel? Do we trust that Jesus is more than convincing? Do we believe God melts hearts of stone and breathes life into dry bones? Do we trust that He can do what I cannot? 

If so, then these words have a place in our vocabularies, too. 

“Come and see.” Over and over again. 

The 2 Questions for Peter are the 2 Questions for Everyone

When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened (Luke 24:9-12).

That first resurrection Sunday was a day of all kinds of questions. Perhaps it should not have been; after all, the refrain surrounding Jesus’ rise from the dead was this:

“Just as He told you.”

And He did. He did tell them. He told them all several times, but they weren’t ready to hear it. Or at least not ready to really hear it. And to compound the issue, the lives of all those early disciples had been turned upside down. Hope was lost; followers were scattered; faith was doubt; and the future was, at best, uncertain. Into the fray came a group of women who had visited the tomb and experienced… something. Something for sure – but no one really knew what. At least not yet.

They told tales of rolled away stones. Of angels with miraculous pronouncements. And of a missing body and… yes… a risen Lord. On the one hand, given their emotional state, we can sympathize with those who chalked up the stories to hysteria. Or a fantastical expression of grief. Or of misguided attempts at comfort. Or of just plain nonsense. But then there was Peter.

Peter, who only days before was so brashly confident that He opposed Jesus’ prediction of His betrayal. Peter, who made big promises about his own faithfulness. Peter who had walked on water and seen miracle after miracle and carried away a whole basket full of food that hadn’t been there before.

Peter who had denied Christ over and over again.

This same Peter, perhaps with a glimmer of hope left in his chest, ran to the tomb to see for himself, and what he found there was… confusing. He was left with questions. Surely all kinds of questions. But perhaps we can boil all the questions in Peter’s mind down to two, and perhaps the two questions Peter had when confronted with the resurrection of Jesus are actually the same two questions every single human being still has to answer when they are confronted with the story of Jesus rising from the dead.

Question 1: Is this real?

This is a base level, factual inquiry. Peter had to decide if what he was seeing was real or not. And then, like now, he had to wade through all the possible explanations, no matter how silly they might seem:

Did someone steal the body?Did Jesus actually die as we thought he did?Is there some vast conspiracy he was somehow not a part of?

Or is the simplest explanation, no matter how unbelievable it might seem to him, actually the real one – that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead? This is the same question we all have to answer before we go any further. We have to reckon with the fact that either Jesus rose from the dead, or He did not, because literally everything else hangs on the answer to that question. Because wound up in that question is the very identity of Jesus. If He did not rise from the dead, then we cannot really believe anything else that He said either. We cannot trust any of His promises if this one was not also true. But if He did rise from the dead? Well, that then leads to the second question for Peter, and for everyone else.

Question 2: What does this mean for me?

This was not a fact-based question for Peter; it was much more personal than that. Let’s say that Peter did believe that the miraculous had happened and Jesus was alive again. Peter still did not know where that left him. He had abandoned Jesus. Betrayed Him. Failed in the test of his faith. Would this Jesus, now alive again, have a place for Peter? Was there grace for him, though he had fallen so far?

And we have this question in common with Peter as well. If we do accept that Jesus is risen from the dead, then where does that leave us? Because we, too, have failed. Time and time again. We have cast off the rule and reign of Jesus in favor of our own desires, seeking to be kings and queens unto ourselves. Is there grace yet for us? Is there room in His kingdom for us?

And gloriously, the answer to both questions is yes. Yes, Jesus is alive. And yes, there is grace for us. In time, Peter will see the answer clearly. By God’s grace, so will we.