In John 2, Jesus attends a wedding in which the wine runs out. In those days, it was a party foul to host a wedding and not have enough wine for the whole party. When the wine runs out, Jesus’ mother, Mary, asks Him to intervene and sends a few servants to help Him rectify the situation. Jesus tells the servants to fill up the waterpots that were being used for the purification ritual for the wedding ceremony. The servants fill up these six stone jars that each hold about twenty to thirty gallons.

I think as Christians, we all have at least one person that we pray would come to know Jesus. A few years ago, when my dad and I were running a youth group, there was one kid that came week in and week out, but he was adamantly rebellious against anything to do with God. He only came because his parents made him and it was one of the only times he got out of the house. For years, I watched my dad and other men in the church try to reach and witness to this kid. There was a lot of prayer, energy, and attention that went into him, and one night the Holy Spirit finally intervened and he admitted to believing in God. He prayed a prayer, and that night there was a lot of rejoicing among the youth leaders. It felt like God finally gave an answer to something long prayed for.

It took Israel three months from their exodus of Egypt until they took up residence around Mount Sinai. In those three months, they saw the end of their slavery, deliverance from Egypt, they walked across the Red Sea, witnessed God’s miraculous provision of food and water, and won a war in God’s name. They saw evidence upon evidence of God’s love and care for them; His strength and power over their enemies and yet His protection over this chosen nation. Israel would go on to spend a long time in the wilderness of Sinai and a lot of their societal structure would be established there. Nevertheless, God wanted to meet His people at Mount Sinai the way He met Moses from within the burning bush.

It seriously boggles my mind how quickly Israel could forget God’s goodness, mercy, and provision towards them. The Jews left Egypt and began their journey in the wilderness in Exodus 15, and here we are in chapter 17 and already we’ve seen 3 different iterations of them having a need, shaking their fists and Moses and God about it, not trusting in God to fill it, and God supernaturally proving Himself by fulfilling their need with a miracle. And what’s worse is that those are just a couple of chapters at the beginning of a 40 year-long journey! We know that there are still many, many more times that Israel repeated that same pattern.

But we are the same way. And just think: If Israel found it hard to rely on God and constantly fell into habits of questioning Him despite the miracles and wonders they witnessed, how much more so is it for us?

When Sam and I were dating or newly married, whenever we went somewhere– be it a park, a concert, or an amusement park– Sam would without fail ask me to put his car keys in my purse. And then he’d ask me to hold his phone… and his wallet. It would always annoy me, because my bag would be brimming with someone else’s stuff. And Sam wasn’t the only person to do it. I’d have friends who would do it too. I guess it’s prone to happen when you’re the one in the group that always carries a bag. That bag was a safe place to keep those items people didn’t want to lose. And they would have been correct, because nothing was ever misplaced when it was in my bag.

Imagine you have a huge debt. I’m talking six figures. Whatever it is– medical, educational, a mortgage– it is crushing and the interest rate on it means that you will be paying it off for the rest of your life. The payments on that debt are so high that you will have to work and work and work around the clock to try and make it. Forget about vacations, luxury items, and eating meals out. You’re just lucky to have food on your table. Everything you think about, do, and work towards seems to have that debt looming over it, shadowing everything. No hope, no relief, no peace.

If you think about it, 1 Peter had to be a very revolutionary letter to the church. Peter, a jew and disciple of Jesus, repeatedly asserts how Christ’s work on the cross put Jews and Gentiles on the same playing field. Until the cross, there was a clear line between the two groups because the Jews were God’s chosen people under His covenant with Abraham. But Jesus’ spilt blood on the cross meant that not only Jews but Gentiles as well could be brought into the family of God and enjoy the same inheritance, grace, and spirituality that was reserved for Jews only up to that point.

I remember being 20 years old at a Friday night worship service. It was an all-are-welcome event, so we brought the youth up from the church basement to be a part of it. In the middle of a song, I felt a little tap on my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see my Pastor, David Knapp, standing next to me. With a little smile on his face, he leaned down so I could hear him and said, “Do you think the youth band has a song they’d like to share?” At this point, we had a small youth band comprised of a handful of teens who were mostly self-taught in their instruments. Still, I nodded and he said, “I’ll let the team on the altar know that the youth are going to lead after the next song.”

Christians get a bad wrap. Why? Because most of the time, we preach a message that comes off “holier than thou” to a world that is comfortable in their sin. I can’t count how many times unsaved people have said something along the lines of, “It’s okay, I’m gonna live it up with my friends at the big party going on in hell when I get there.” And I know it’s meant to be a joke, albeit not a very funny one, but it just goes to show how tightly people will cling to their sin and their comfortable pleasures, despite the fact that those things will never add up to eternal salvation.

Peter denied Jesus just before His death. If Jesus were anyone else and not the Son of God, I’m sure it would have been the end of a relationship, a revocation of his calling, and two hurt people. That’s what Peter deserved: to lose Jesus’ love, lose the purpose Jesus instilled in him, and to live with his failure. It’s what you and I deserve for sure. Because we’ve all done what Peter did. Maybe not under the same circumstances, but we’ve all fallen short. We’ve all messed up. We’ve all had moments of weak faith that caused us to be less confident in our belief.

As far as the disciples go, Peter is probably the most well known. He’s memorable, he’s relatable, and he’s known for both his passionate faith in Christ and his antics. He walked on water, but he almost drowned because he got wrapped up in the moment and took his focus off Jesus. He was a fisherman, the “rock” on which the early church is built, and one of Jesus’ closest friends. He cut off the ear of one of the soldiers who showed up to arrest Jesus. But probably most notably, he’s the guy that denied Christ three times mere hours after the whole group was together in the upper room at the Last Supper. It’s hard to imagine, but it took less than a day to go from that intimate Passover meal to Christ’s arrest and the subsequent scattering of all the disciples. By the time Christ’s trial in front of the Sanhedrin took place, only Peter was left to follow Him, and even then, he followed at a distance.

Imagine: You’re a little kid and you’re tossing a baseball in the house– something you’ve been told many times not to do. The more you toss the ball, the more you get lost in your make-believe game. Suddenly, you’re not in the living room anymore. In your mind, you’re under the lights of a stadium, pitching in the World Series. You wind up for the pitch at the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and everyone’s eyes are on you. You throw and– Crash.

Blessed are those who mourn… It might seem sort of contradictory. How can it be possible to mourn and yet be blessed? If we’re mourning, it would mean we lost something, right? And losing something or someone to the point of grief can’t be something Jesus wants for us, let alone something He blesses us with. Yes, when Jesus says blessed are those who mourn, He means real and harrowing heartache. The word He uses in the Greek is “pentheó” which means a deep, personal grief over a death or a hope that dies. It is a grief so severe that it takes possession of the person and cannot be hidden.

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, He gives a lesson on a mountainside. There is a great crowd of people around Him, and they are all attentive to what this Messiah has to say. For the Jews, they believed that Jesus was here to free them from Roman occupation and rule, restoring them to political power and peace, and reigning over them victoriously whilst pouring out spiritual and material blessings over His chosen people the Jews. But in Matthew 5, the beginning of what has more popularly become known as the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sets a very different tone than what the Jewish people assumed of a Messiah for generations. Instead, Jesus lays out more of a foundation to discipleship; what daily life looks like for someone who belongs to the Kingdom of Heaven, and how His followers should ethically live.

Can you stop in the middle of a task and change gears? I know that’s something I struggle with. If my husband calls from the other room, I usually say I need a couple minutes, or ask him to let me finish this one thing first. I don’t do well leaving something undone, or almost done. My tunnel vision makes it hard for me to walk away from loose ends. So when I read the above verses, part of me wonders whether I’d be able to drop my nets and my boat in order to follow someone indefinitely. But when I think on it, this is something that isn’t out of the ordinary when it comes to scripture.

As I write this, I am officially 36 weeks along in my pregnancy with our first child. Each day is a mixture of wild anticipation and timid caution. Are we ready for her? What else needs to be done? Are we going to be good parents? How else can we possibly prepare for the labor, birth, postpartum period, and the transition into parenthood? Every way you slice it, it all feels like new territory. I’ve babysat before; I’ve watched my mom and dad raise my brother from a young age. But none have been fully mine– none of them have been a child grown in areas only I have ever occupied or borne of my body.