Christ Kona?

imes
Cries
There’s more
than one reason
Remembering Peter
Then there was Peter. Do you remember
Peter on the day Jesus was preparing
for His walk to Calvary’s hill? Jesus
informed him and the other disciples
that He was going where they could not
yet go. “Why?” Peter demanded, before
assuring Jesus he would die for Him.
“Before the rooster crows, you will disown
me three times,” Jesus told His
pompous but well-meaning disciple
(Matt. 26:34). And sure enough, Peter
denied his Lord three times. Then the
cock crowed. As Jesus turned and
looked at Peter, the disciple had a sudden
sense of his human limitations and
of Jesus’ divine foreknowledge. According
to Luke 22:62, Peter “went outside
and wept bitterly.”
Here is Peter—the disciple’s disciple,
brave, boisterous, and bombastic. In his
own eyes, at least, he’s primus inter
pares, first among equals. Here he is in
the courtyard, safe from his Master’s
loving but revealing glance. And he’s
weeping like a baby.
Peter and Jesus wept for very different
reasons, which simply shows that weeping
may be motivated by more than one
reason. So why might you, as a Christian,
find yourself moved to tears? Do you see
yourself in Peter’s sandals—overconfident
one day, weeping the next? Or for
you is there some other reason? Perhaps
I might mention three—three sentiments
that are thoroughly Christian that
may move us to tears.
Weeping for Injustice
First, we hurt when we see or experience
injustice. We properly associate
Peter’s torrent of tears with his three
denials, but the injustice meted out to his
Master, Messiah, and Friend also took an
emotional toll on this disciple. Despite
his bluster, Peter proved to be more sensitive
than we might have given him
credit for being. Ellen White says that
Peter’s heart “was wrung
with sorrow as he heard the
cruel taunts, and saw the
abuse He was suffering.” 1
It is never inappropriate to
feel pain when we face personal
injustice or persecution.
But there is greater
Christian nobility in suffering,
as Peter did, at the pain
of injustice committed
against another.
You may mock, if you like,
at Peter’s denial of his Savior.
But remember that he himself
came to know persecution
intimately. Eventually Peter was
crucified. Tradition records that, feeling
unworthy to die as his Master had died, he
demanded to be placed on the cross
upside down.
Adventists think of God’s remnant
church as facing some future time of
persecution for worshipping on God’s
true Sabbath. But even today about 200
million Christians face persecution in
some 60 countries because they refuse
to deny the name and divinity of Jesus. 2
As fellow Christians, we should not
ignore the persecution, and often the
martyrdom, of these believers.
On March 2, 2011, Shahbaz Bhatti was
assassinated. 3 He was minister for
minorities in the Pakistani government.
His crime was twofold. He was a Christian
in a Muslim land, and he opposed
the Pakistani law permitting the death
penalty for blasphemy against Islam.
My heart was touched by a photograph
of a Pakistani woman crying uncontrol-
www.AdventistReview.org | May 16, 2013 | (441) 25