Matthew 14-15

(April 23, 2015)

                We each are very tempted to see things through the prism of our own narrative.  After all, we are each the hero of our own stories. But it is essential that we recognize that the world doesn’t revolve around us and most of the things that happen (though calculated as part of a perfect Plan for our benefit) are not central to us.

                For example, John the Baptist was called to prepare the way of the Christ and to baptize Him.  Yet Herod could not see past his own situation, and focused on John in his prism.  He thought of John as a gadfly trying to bother him, when John in fact had a much larger mission.

                My other thought was on the language used by Peter when the miracle happened.  He didn’t ask the Savior if he could come out on the water.  Instead he asked the Lord to bid him to come unto the Lord upon the water.  He understood, with that language, that the miracles would come in our attempts to fulfill the commandments of the Lord far more readily than when we simply wanted them for our own purposes.