Tell Me the Dream Again: Healing and Wholeness After Hiding Sample

The guards lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat around it, and Peter joined them there. A servant girl noticed him in the firelight and began staring at him. Finally she said, “This man was one of Jesus’ followers!”

But Peter denied it. “Woman,” he said, “I don’t even know him!”

About an hour later someone else insisted, “This must be one of them, because he is a Galilean, too.”

But Peter said, “Man, I don’t know what you are talking about.” And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed.

At that moment the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Suddenly, the Lord’s words flashed through Peter’s mind: “Before the rooster crows tomorrow morning, you will deny three times that you even know me.” And Peter left the courtyard, weeping bitterly.

Luke 22:54-61, nlt

Peter wanted to assimilate and blend in. In his fear of being seen as exactly who he was and who he’d become, he tried to hide.

Sometimes we cover up the parts of us that are most precious. Sometimes it’s the parts of us that feel most like home, most loved and known, that we hide or deny when faced with the harshness of the world. Whether we like it or not, there are systems of normalcy and hierarchy in the cultures we live in, and they are painful expressions of generations of brokenness.

When Jesus was arrested, Peter was faced with the reality of his intimate relationship with Jesus and the death of what he thought following Jesus would look like. His expectations collided with a culture and world that didn’t understand his deepening faith and person-hood, and he was terrified. As a Jewish man, he was faced with doing things differently from any other Jewish man who had gone before him.

I can imagine him asking, “Who am I now?” in the wake of all that had happened.

While I would never wish for anyone to experience the pain of assimilating and trying to put to death the details of the imago Dei within, the experience does serve to illuminate the true depth or shallowness of our intimacy with Jesus.

In my own journey, the pain of assimilation has begged the questions, Do I really believe Jesus loves all of me, my most Korean details and all? If so, what does that mean? And if not, what does that mean?

When the rooster called out, Jesus reminded Peter who he was. It was a painful moment, but it was also a call of love and pursuit.

Peter wept bitterly, and those bitter tears were a launching place for him to ask himself hard questions, come out of hiding, and begin to heal and embrace his own wholeness, in love.