Today, I am reading and commenting on  Mark 14-16.

I want to look at the juxtaposition here of Jesus telling the Twelve that one of them will betray Him, then later telling them that all of them will fall away.  I believe that these two are so close together in the narrative to remind us that while we may not actively betray Jesus as Judas did, at some point we will fail to stand up for Him, just as the other eleven did.  Which brings me to Peter, who emphatically stated that he would stand by Jesus, even if no one else did.  We often focus on Peter’s later denial, but his mistake was in thinking that he was more able to stand up for Jesus, that he could stand when all else fell away.  God gave Peter three chances to live up to his claim to be more faithful than everyone else, to stand with Jesus when no one else would.  God did this in order to make Peter understand that he was not stronger, more faithful than everyone else.  However, when the messenger spoke to the women at the Tomb on Sunday morning, the messenger told the women to tell Jesus’ disciples and Peter that Jesus would meet them in Galilee.  So, God reminded Peter that even though he was not better than the others, he was still one of them, and God still loved him.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.