Why are we so fickle in our relationship with God? Why do we take for granted the gift of God's love?  We have not yet permanently  fallen in love with God! Like Peter we mean well but we don't follow through with our decision. The same Peter who said to Jesus “Lord, to whom shall we go, you have the words of everlasting life. We have come to believe; we are convinced that you are God’s holy one,” is the same person who denied the Master three times on the night of Jesus’ arrest. This was almost prophetically predictable by Peter’s track record before the Resurrection. When Jesus invited Peter to come to him on the water, Peter got out of the boat, gazed at Jesus intently and began to walk on water. But when he took his eyes off Jesus and began to focus on his own weaknesses against the waves and the wind, he began to sink. As long as we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus in love and trust, we will not succumb to the temptations of our weak nature.

What we need to do is fall in love with Jesus. What happens when someone falls in love with another person, not just infatuation or self-centered love, but the love that transforms a relationship into a oneness?  Nothing else matters but the other person. No mountain is too high to climb, no distance is too far to go, no price is too great to pay. Without the other, life has no meaning. It is not so much what the other can do for us, as much as what can we do for the other.

It was this love which transformed Peter from a fisherman to an apostle, from a doubter to a believer, from a brash, boastful person into a committed lover of the one person who brought the best out of Peter, accepting him as he was. That person was Jesus. (To be continued)