Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

Peter's vigil

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Luke 24:12
Peter got up.

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/033013.cfm

This has been the darkest night and the darkest day of my life. I'm walking around in a fog. I sit in a corner and close my eyes, but not to sleep, only to escape. There is nowhere to escape to. I envy Judas. He is dead. I want to be.

I betrayed Jesus with my mouth, my eyes, my feet. My fear is stronger than my faith. Nothing, none of what Jesus said, none of what we did together, none of the promises I thought I believed, nothing came to mind. Only fear. I shook inside. Muscles lost their fiber. I could hold nothing in.

What was the worst moment? When Jesus was taken away, and I could not follow. My body wouldn't go. He died without me beside him. His eyes weren't covered on the cross. He looked around, and down at his family, and he didn't see me. I ran as fast as I could away.

But I could get away from nothing. I saw his eyes when he looked straight at me in the temple court. His eyes were wide open. My eyes were full of fear, but his were not. They were disappointed and they were sad. His lips twitched, a tiny smile. Nothing more.

What does he mean with his tiny smile? He "can do nothing except what the Father is doing?" Is that still true? What does your tiny smile mean, Lord? The soldiers turned him away, and our eyes no longer met. That's when I knew what I had done. Then I was alone. God had turned away from me.

I don't want to be with my brothers. I want to run and run and run, and never turn back. O Lord, protect me from the hanging tree, because all I want today is to die. I'm caught and can't get loose, and my guilt is strangling me. I am ashamed of what I've done and who I am.

Jesus is dead, and I want to be. But he died for love, and I want to die because I hate myself. I can't close my eyes, because all I see is my ugly, sneering, violating, screaming face. I am reduced. I am nothing. I am pinned and wriggling on the wall. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

I am a formless wasteland, and darkness covers all my empty life. Mindless, meaningless wind blows through the abyss of my soul. Wherever Jesus touched, he brought light into me, and now I have extinguished it. I am snuffed out.

And God saw that it was very good. How can you see me as good, Lord? Jesus called me a little child, a child that his Father loves and will always love and will never stop loving. I feel nothing of that now, Lord. I am not good. I am ugly and mean and afraid and angry and NOT GOOD! Who will rescue me from this body of death? The darkness is my closest friend.

Devotions Archive

Peter's vigil

Saturday, March 30, 2013