It is enough that we have a good God. [Mark 8]

I like Peter. Because he is clumsy, honest, broken and so human. If the church is founded on the rock of his declaration that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ (and it is) then it is also very much in the manner of Peter: making errors, being rebuked.

Because his attempt to correct Christ is so reasonable. Don’t go there. You are going to die! You are master, our teacher, you must remain! Don’t leave us alone!

And that fear of being alone drives us all too often to sin, as if solitude is a disaster, not out fate. For we will die alone. We cannot take our family with us, or claim their faith.

	And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.”

	And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.

	And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

(Mark 8:22-33 ESV)

The trouble we have is that we are limited. We are fallen. We are broken. Peter is a symbol: for Peter is us. We cannot discern the plans of God: we are unable to comprehend them. It would be akin to a Dog doing calculus.

It is enough for the Dog to have a good master, and us to have a just, righteous and loving God.