Roles with Our Names on Them

by Barbara Brown Taylor: "Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter"
The story of Good Friday is one that can happen anywhere at any time, and we are as likely to be the perpetrators as the victims. I doubt that many of us will end up playing Caiaphas or Pilate. They may have given Jesus the death sentence, but what about Judas, Peter, and all those who fled? Those are the roles with our names on them.
Whenever someone famous gets in trouble, the press focuses on his friends. Do they support him or do they say that they had seen trouble coming? One of the worst things a friend can say is what Peter said: We weren't friends, exactly. Acquaintances might be a better word. Actually, we just worked together. Not really even together. Just near each other. I didn't know him well.

Confidence in Waiting

Being means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything! [Rainer Maria Rilke]

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I am feeling blessed - because somehow, in the last nine months, I have felt a peace that passes understanding. And now in this new position, it is an easy transition. Not like going from empty to full, but from one place to another, just the same. God's hand on me last month was no different than it is now. Because I trusted him then, I continue to trust him now - the waiting is over, in a sense, but the waiting continues. It is a good place to be. It is faith - and even that is God's gift to me. ~Peter.