Scripture
But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. “Heaven forbid, Lord,” he said. “This will never happen to you!” Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.” Matthew 15:22-23

Observation
How could Peter plummet from hero to zero so quickly? In one paragraph Peter was an honor roll student while in the next he is a dunce. How did he get it wrong? How can I get it right?

Here’s the secret: look at all of life from God’s point of view.

Peter was commended by Jesus not just for seeing that he is Messiah, but that “my Father in heaven has revealed this to you.” (16:17) What mattered most to Jesus was not that Peter had the right answer but how he had come to the right conclusion. Peter had taken time to ask the Father. That mattered most. Peter had been able to push past the denseness of the disciples and the criticism of the Pharisees and had seen the world just as God sees it. That meant that his heart was open, teachable, and looking beyond circumstances to God. Peter was asking and listening.

Peter was reprimanded because he was “seeing things merely from a human point of view not from God’s.” He saw the cross without the Father and could not imagine any good thing coming from that. But had he given God space to interpret it to him, Peter might have grasped the plan of salvation in advance. Abraham saw Jesus’ day and rejoiced from 2000 years before. Why not Peter just months away?

Application
I need in every life setback, to ask the question: Father, how does this look from your perspective? Tomorrow I’m going to a funeral that is very sad. A cousin of Leslie my wife died at just 31 years of age. She was newly married and had not yet had a family. It’s impossible to ignore the tragedy of a virus that destroyed her internal organs in just a few days. But there are things God can see if we will dare to look at the future through his eyes.

Prayer
Father, there is plenty of roadkill on my journey with you that I do not understand, but I ask that you would help me to see things from your point of view. I give you space and time to show me how the cross leads to the resurrection even in the events I walk through today. Amen.